breathing

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act or process of respiration.
• noun A single breath.
• noun The time required to take one's breath.
• noun Either of two marks, the rough breathing ( ʽ ) and the smooth breathing ( ᾽ ), used in Greek to indicate presence or absence of aspiration.
• noun The presence or absence of aspiration indicated by either of these marks.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun Respiration; the act of inhaling and exhaling air: as,“a difficulty of breathing,”
• noun Aspiration; secret prayer or desire.
• noun Aërial motion; respiratory action.
• noun Figuratively, a gentle influence or operation; inspiration:as, the breathings of the Spirit.
• noun A breathing-place; a vent.
• noun Physical exercise, from the fact that it calls the lungs into free play: as, the Oxford crew took their breathings every morning at ten.
• noun Utterance; words.
• noun Time taken to recover breath; hence, a stop; a delay.
• noun In grammar, aspiration or its absence, or a sign indicating it.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun Respiration; the act of inhaling and exhaling air.
• noun Air in gentle motion.
• noun Any gentle influence or operation; inspiration.
• noun Aspiration; secret prayer.
• noun Exercising; promotion of respiration.
• noun Utterance; communication or publicity by words.
• noun Breathing place; vent.
• noun Stop; pause; delay.
• noun Also, in a wider sense, the sound caused by the friction of the outgoing breath in the throat, mouth, etc., when the glottis is wide open; aspiration; the sound expressed by the letter h.
• noun (Gr. Gram.) A mark to indicate aspiration or its absence. See Rough breathing, Smooth breathing, below.
• noun A vent.
• noun pause; relaxation.
• noun time sufficient for drawing breath; a short time.
• noun See 2d Asper, n.
• noun a mark (') indicating the absence of the sound of h, as in 'ie`nai (ienai).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• verb Present participle of breathe.
• noun The act of respiration; a single instance of this.
• noun A diacritical mark indicating aspiration or lack thereof.
• noun archaic Time to recover one's breath; hence, a delay, a spell of time.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• adjective passing or able to pass air in and out of the lungs normally; sometimes used in combination
• noun the bodily process of inhalation and exhalation; the process of taking in oxygen from inhaled air and releasing carbon dioxide by exhalation