respire
Americanverb (used without object)
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to inhale and exhale air for the purpose of maintaining life; breathe.
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to breathe freely again, after anxiety, trouble, etc.
verb (used with object)
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to breathe; inhale and exhale.
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to exhale.
verb
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to inhale and exhale (air); breathe
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(intr) to undergo the process of respiration
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literary to breathe again in a relaxed or easy manner, as after stress or exertion
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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respiresimple
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respiressimple
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have respiredperfect
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has respiredperfect
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am respiringprogressive
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are respiringprogressive
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is respiringprogressive
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have been respiringperfect progressive
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has been respiringperfect progressive
Past
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respiredsimple
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had respiredperfect
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was respiringprogressive
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were respiringprogressive
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had been respiringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of respire
1375–1425; late Middle English respiren < Latin respīrāre, equivalent to re- re- + spīrāre to breathe; see spirit
Explanation
To respire is to breathe in and out. After a calf is born, a farmer might watch it respire for a while to make sure it's okay. While you can use the verb respire simply to mean "breathe," it's most often used in a medical or scientific context. A nurse might worry about the rate at which a patient respires, and a biologist might discuss the way a plant respires at night, when light doesn't reach its leaves. The Latin root, respirare, means "breathe again" or "breathe in and out," from re-, "again," and spirare, "to breathe."
Vocabulary lists containing respire
"Simon's Saga," Vocabulary from Episode 17
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The Body Eclectic: Words For Common Physical Functions
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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.
See Examples For:
Tiny pores on a leaf’s underside are arranged to take in carbon dioxide and respire water, allowing the plant to transform sunlight into energy.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 23, 2021
On average, pregnant women suffer twice as many bites, as they respire 20% more carbon dioxide, and have a marginally elevated body temperature.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 20, 2019
High energy–yielding pathways in cells require oxygen, and that is the reason we need to breathe, or respire.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2018
But at night, plants and animals respire and take away too much oxygen, said the study’s lead author, Denise Breitburg, a marine ecologist at SERC.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 11, 2015
The usual way of looking at them is as enslaved creatures, captured to supply ATP for cells unable to respire on their own, or to provide carbohydrate and oxygen for cells unequipped for photosynthesis.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
The environment in which the animal lives greatly determines how an animal respires.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
"Culture is his air and water; he respires ideas, and whistles and hums as he does so," Leonard wrote.
From US News ● Sep. 18, 2015
A rat respires 100 to 200 times a minute, a cat 20 to 30 times, an adult human 16 to 24 times,* a horse 6 to 10 times.
From Time Magazine Archive
Yet beasts must have a place Beneath our godlike race, Which no mere plant requires Although the plant respires.
From Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Wright, Elizur
He also respires in like manner, inasmuch as thought and respiration act correspondently.
From Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom by Ager, John
"These associations may help explain why some organic molecules remain protected in soils while others are more vulnerable to being broken down and respired by microbes."
From Science Daily ● Feb. 9, 2026
As oxygen from the environment combines with the sugars in patats, it gets respired from the roots as carbon dioxide and water.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2021
We might say that, if the sensuous was his atmosphere, the breathing apparatus with which he respired it was sentiment.
From Life of John Keats by Rossetti, William Michael
Fresh oxygen is added to this current of air and it is then returned to the chamber to be respired.
From Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man by Benedict, Francis Gano
The quality of respired air influences the generation of animal heat.
From A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) by Cutter, Calvin
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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
