respiring
- present participle of respire.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Their role as predators can even help with carbon dynamics, keeping carbon locked up in marine sediments, or by controlling the amount of respiring biomass in our seas.
From Salon ● Dec. 15, 2018
Roberts’s abdominal cavity looked like the inside of a mossy, yellow cave lit up by miners’ headlamps; vasculature appeared like streaks of mineral ore, the liver like a respiring troglobite.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 19, 2016
The mitochondrion is thought to have been a respiring bacterium and the chloroplast to have been a photosynthesizing relative of the cyanobacteria.
From Scientific American ● Jan. 1, 2013
As carbon pours into the bucket through photosynthesis, it constantly leaks out through other processes, mostly decomposition and respiring plants and microbes.
From US News ● Apr. 18, 2011
First, when Martian soil was mixed with a sterile organic soup from Earth, something in the soil chemically broke down the soup—almost as if there were respiring microbes metabolizing a food package from Earth.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
