breath: [OE] Breath comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhrē- ‘burn, heat’ (source also of braise, breed, brood, and probably brawn), and in its original Indo-European form *bhrētos appears to have meant something like the ‘steam, vapour, etc given off by something burning or cooking’. When it reached Old English, via Germanic *brǣthaz, it still meant ‘smell’ or ‘exhalation’, and it was not in fact until as late as the 14th century that this notion of ‘exhalation’ came to be applied to human or animal respiration (the main Old English word for ‘breath’ had been ǣthm, which German still has in the form atem).
Old English bræð "odor, scent, stink, exhalation, vapor" (Old English word for "air exhaled from the lungs" was æðm), from Proto-Germanic *bræthaz "smell, exhalation" (cognates: Old High German bradam, German Brodem "breath, steam"), from PIE root *gwhre- "to breathe, smell."
双语例句
1. I held my breath and sank under the water.
我屏住呼吸沉入水底。
来自柯林斯例句
2. There she was, slightly out of breath from running.
她在那儿，跑得有点儿喘不过气来。
来自柯林斯例句
3. He was aware of the stink of stale beer on his breath.
他知道自己嘴里有股变味啤酒的馊味。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The whole world holds its breath for this speech.
整个世界都屏住呼吸等待这一讲话。
来自柯林斯例句
5. Any exercise that causes undue shortness of breath should be stopped.
