Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To come to an end; terminate: My membership in the club has expired.
- v. To breathe one's last breath; die: The patient expired early this morning.
- v. To exhale; breathe out.
- v. To breathe (something) out.
- v. Archaic To give (something) off.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To breathe out; expel from the mouth or nostrils in the process of respiration; emit from the lungs: opposed to inspire.
- To give out or forth insensibly or gently, as a fluid or volatile matter; exhale; yield.
- To exhaust; wear out; bring to an end.
- To emit the breath: opposed to inspire. Specifically
- To emit the last breath; die.
- To come to an end; close or conclude, as a given period; come to nothing; cease; terminate; fail or perish; end: as, the lease will expire on the first day of May; all his hopes of empire expired.
- To come out; fly out.
- Synonyms Perish, etc. See die.
Wiktionary
- v. intransitive to die
- v. intransitive to become invalid
- v. intransitive to exhale; to breathe (out).
- v. transitive to exhale (something).
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To breathe out; to emit from the lungs; to throw out from the mouth or nostrils in the process of respiration; -- opposed to
inspire . - v. To give forth insensibly or gently, as a fluid or vapor; to emit in minute particles; to exhale
- v. obsolete To emit; to give out.
- v. obsolete To bring to a close; to terminate.
- v. To emit the breath.
- v. To emit the last breath; to breathe out the life; to die
- v. To come to an end; to cease; to terminate; to perish; to become extinct
- v. obsolete To burst forth; to fly out with a blast.
WordNet 3.0
- v. pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life
- v. expel air
- v. lose validity
Etymologies
- From Latin ex- ("out") + spīro ("breathe, be alive") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English expiren, from Old French expirer, from Latin exspīrāre : ex-, ex- + spīrāre, to breathe. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Justice David Prosser, one of the four-justice unofficial conservative majority, sees his term expire this year.”
“If conflicts come up, instead of taking all the group's time to address the issues you can simply let the term expire and the group dissolve.”
“Dictator during the years of the Republic had his term expire after only a year, yet during that year no-one would argue that during that year there was no dictatorship, even though they often stepped down willingly at the end of their term.”
“Cindy Neathawk, who became vice chairwoman in 2008, will also see her term expire this year, but on Monday she asked the council to be appointed for another term.”
“But if the term expire, pending the fuit, the plaintiff fhall not recover the poffef - fion, I JO Judgment where the plaintiflf hath a verdift only for part, Hid.”
“Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's United Progressive Alliance will see its term expire in May, and India's election rules mean that he can no longer enact any significant policies — a measure adopted to prevent incumbents from stacking the deck with populist sops.”
“There are ways to remove the Presidentimpeachment &removal, don’t re-elect him, let his term expire, etc., but there is no way soldiers would ever even attempt this.”
“But the net effect of Obama's proposal, as compared with the current law which would let all of the Bush tax cuts expire, is a tax cut for 98 percent of taxpayers.”
The Huffington Post: Mark Weisbrot: Extending the Tax Cuts: The Ninety-Eight Percent Solution
“What happens after those two months expire is still unclear, but what is certain is that the United States will have abandoned any leverage with Israel and any chance of brokering a peace accord.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘expire’.
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Yazhinni Spelling bee
tongue, stallion, scruple, salinity, schedule, rouge, populist, Permian, perspire, pasteurize, multitude, mournful and 227 more...
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life, death, rebirth
vale of tears, aborning, transmigration, reincarnate, nativity, nascence, metempsychosis, palingenesis, againrising, psychopannychism, thnetopsychism, shuffle off this ... and 104 more...
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webdev
random webdev lingo used primarily in computer programming.
( open list, randomness, technical jargon, geek speak )
more:
ajax, user, admin, frontend, backend, database, sql, protocol, call, dom, layout, ui and 439 more... -
EU Buzz - Lisbon Treaty
All words of the Lisbon Treaty
(Persons' names, foreign and grammatical words have been eliminated, MWEs have been split up into individual words. Capitalization has been retained if r...health, follow, condition, meeting, minister, beginning, chapter, information, language, remain, covered, respect and 2614 more...
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Words for financial performance
Business and financial journalists tend to use the same tired few words to describe what happens to economies, markets and prices. Enough of grow, soar, boom, crash, bust, collapse and so on. Let's...
swell, inflate, dilate, mount, accrue, magnify, amplify, blossom, fatten up, dwindle, dissipate, shrivel and 31 more...
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The Vampire Spotter's Guide
Even if you know your Nosferatu from your Dracula, you may not have heard of these before. (Thanks to bilby for the list suggestion on Transpire.)
transpire, empire, umpire, expire, perspire, leptospire, conspire, coconspire, pompire, inspire, spire, aspire and 4 more...
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No Dearth of Deadly Designations
catafalque, cenotaph, necropolis, sepulcher, sarcophagus, mausoleum, reliquary, ossuary, necrosis, cadaver, cadaverous, pyre and 103 more...
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The Ex-acting Xray
Out of this world via the "X-express".
exorbitant, exuberant, extant, exultant, expectorate, exhilarate, excommunicate, exacting, extenuate, exculpate, extirpate, expostulate and 110 more...
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Some Wednesday words
Just another arbitrary list of words that come up for me today, June 20 2007
tutelage, hobby horse, abracadabra, occipital, martinet, margarita, persona, cute, sharp, acute, confabulate, conspire and 97 more...
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Prosie: The Crisis
By Thomas Paine. Published on December 23, 1776 (later published as The American Crisis). Posted here as excerpts, not in entirety.
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer s...unlamented, wretch, bawdy-houses, ravaged, slain, widow, orphan, terror, fleeing, shrieking, horrid, brutish and 40 more...
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vocab set 3
alternative, barter, commerce, confine, evolve, expand, expire, exploit, formal, inheritable, integral, mobility and 23 more...
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Exit Strategy
Euphemisms for the curiously common human pastime of dying.
pass on, depart, decease, buy it, join the choir in..., shuffle off this ..., expire, snuff it, croak, dance, meet your maker, pop off and 66 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for expire.

Prolagus A vampire in the sunlight. Mar 25, 2009