Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The breath of life; that which imparts or sustains life; a vivifying principle or agency.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • A place where chocolate-dipped demon mummies can never, ever reach you - much less wrap you in their fudgy arms and squeeze the life-breath out of you.

    Et Tu, O-Town? 2010

  • Did not the One make [all], so that all remaining life-breath is His?

    Rashi. 2009

  • M.G. Vaidya, the senior RSS leader, had once famously said that “the BJP is not the life-breath of the Sangh”.

    BJP can never shed its stigma of Babri and Best Bakery Tusar N Mohapatra 2009

  • M.G. Vaidya, the senior RSS leader, had once famously said that “the BJP is not the life-breath of the Sangh”.

    Archive 2009-05-01 Tusar N Mohapatra 2009

  • That is to say, Sumerian Utu-zi 'Life-breath of the sun' would have become a partial calque Ut(a)-napishtim which would be reinterpreted by scribes and priests to mean 'he found (uta-) life-breath (napishtim)' (nb. the replacement of Sum. utu 'sun' with Bab. ūta 'found') and thus back into Sumerian with the reformulated Zi-ud-sura 'Life of long days', now implying a character who has found immortality.

    Archive 2009-11-01 2009

  • Singing and public acclaim were her life-breath and inspiration as an artist.

    Nechama Hendel. 2009

  • That is to say, Sumerian Utu-zi 'Life-breath of the sun' would have become a partial calque Ut(a)-napishtim which would be reinterpreted by scribes and priests to mean 'he found (uta-) life-breath (napishtim)' (nb. the replacement of Sum. utu 'sun' with Bab. ūta 'found') and thus back into Sumerian with the reformulated Zi-ud-sura 'Life of long days', now implying a character who has found immortality.

    Odysseus, Uthuze and Utnapishtim 2009

  • “I will do my best,” said Douban; “but your Majesty must consider, that we work upon a frail and exhausted subject, whose health seems already wellnigh gone, and may perhaps vanish in an instant — like this pale and trembling light, whose precarious condition the life-breath of this unfortunate patient seems closely to resemble.”

    Count Robert of Paris 2008

  • “Now more yet would I say, but for my wounds, but my life-breath flits; the wounds open, — yet have I said sooth.”

    The Story of the Volsungs 2008

  • So he kissed the ground a score of times and rose not till his life-breath was in his nostrils. 299 Then he left the

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

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