Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To draw (air or smoke, for example) into the lungs by breathing; inspire.
  • intransitive verb Informal To consume rapidly or eagerly; devour.
  • intransitive verb To breathe in; inspire.
  • intransitive verb To draw smoke into the lungs; puff.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To draw in, as air into the lungs; draw in by breathing, or by some analogous process.

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

  • transitive verb To breathe or draw into the lungs; to inspire; ; -- opposed to exhale.

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

  • verb intransitive To draw air into the lungs, through the nose or mouth by action of the diaphragm.
  • verb transitive To draw air or any form of gas (either in a pure form, or mixed with small particles in form of aerosols/smoke -sometimes stemming from a medicament) into the lungs, through the nose or mouth by action of the diaphragm.
  • verb transitive, figuratively To eat very quickly.

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

  • verb draw deep into the lungs in by breathing
  • verb draw in (air)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin inhālāre, to breathe upon (meaning influenced by contrast with exhale) : in-, in; see in– + hālāre, to breathe.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin inhalare ("to breathe on (breathe in)"), from in ("in, into, on") + halare ("to breathe").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word inhale.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.