Other forms: breaths
Breath is the air that goes in and out of your body. Take a breath, out of breath, hold your breath.
An adult takes about twelve to twenty breaths a minute at rest. Out of breath is what running leaves you, and catch your breath is the recovery. Note the spelling pair everybody trips over: breath is the noun and breathe is the verb, with the e and the sound both changing. Note also under your breath, meaning muttered; a breath of fresh air; and don't hold your breath, meaning it will not happen.
1nounbreathThe air that goes in and out of your body.
“An adult takes about sixteen breaths a minute at rest.”
2nounslightA slight movement or trace of something.
“There wasn't a breath of wind, and the lake was perfectly still.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
breath is air taken in and out.
Old English braeth meant a smell or vapour rather than breathing, and the modern sense pushed out the older word aethm. The verb breathe was formed from the noun rather than the other way round.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰreh₁-
Proto-West Germanic
*brāþi — vapour, waft, exhalation, breath
Old English
brǣþ — odor, scent, stink, exhalation, vapor
Middle English
breeth
English, today
breath
From Middle English breeth, breth, from Old English brǣþ (“odor, scent, stink, exhalation, vapor”), from Proto-West Germanic brāþi (“vapour, waft, exhalation, breath”) (compare German Brodem (“haze, vapor; breath”), of a different but related formation).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA