Other forms: breathing, breathed, breathes
To breathe is to pull air into your body and let it out again, in and out, all day, without thinking about it. You notice it when you run for a bus, or when a nurse says breathe in and presses a cold disc against your back.
Watch the spelling, because this is the mistake nearly everyone makes: breathe is the verb, breath is the noun, and only the verb has the E on the end. You breathe; you take a breath. The verb reaches past lungs — leather and soil breathe, a shirt breathes, a bottle of wine is left to breathe. You breathe a sigh of relief when the bad news does not come, and someone breathing down your neck is standing too close and watching too hard. Do not breathe a word means keep it to yourself.
1verbbreatheTo take air into the lungs and let it out again.~98%
“Breathe in slowly through your nose and hold it for three seconds.”
2verbpassTo let air pass through, so that something does not go damp or stale.~2%
“Leather boots need to breathe, so keep them out of a plastic bag.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Breathe grew out of the noun. Middle English brethen — to breathe, to blow, to exhale — was made from breth, breath. It then pushed aside the verbs English already had: ethien and orðian, from Old English orþian, to breathe, and anden, borrowed from Old Norse. The noun came first; the verb is the newcomer that outlived the older ones.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰreh₁-
an unknown language
breeth
Middle English
brethen
English, today
breathe
Built from
From Middle English brethen, from an unknown language breeth. From Middle English brethen (“to breathe, blow, exhale, odour”), derived from Middle English breth (“breath”). Eclipsed Middle English ethien and orðiæn, from Old English ēþian and orþian (“to breathe”); as well as Middle English anden, onden, from Old Norse anda (“to breathe”). More at breath.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA