Sneeze

How to spell sneeze

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sneeze

What does sneeze mean?

1. verbTo expel air suddenly and noisily from the nose and mouth in an involuntary reflex.
2. nounA sudden, noisy expulsion of air from the nose and mouth.

Sneeze in a sentence

• verb

  Dust in the old attic made him sneeze repeatedly.

• noun

  A loud sneeze echoed across the quiet library.

• verb

  The pollen count was so high that she began to sneeze on the walk home.

• noun

  She felt a sneeze building and reached for a tissue.

Where does sneeze come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word goes back to Old English fnēosan, meaning 'to sneeze', an imitative word that echoed the explosive sound of the act itself. In Middle English it appeared as fnesen, but the unusual opening cluster 'fn-' was rare and awkward in English and gradually fell out of use. A common explanation is that scribes misread the 'fn-' as 'sn-' because the medieval long 's' looked very like an 'f', and the new form was reinforced by other nose and breath words such as 'snore' and 'snort'. By the 1400s the spelling 'snese' was established, eventually settling as 'sneeze'. The doubled 'ee' simply marks the long vowel sound, which is the only real spelling point to remember.

How the word is built

• sneeze (single root, no prefix or suffix; from Old English fnēosan)