Word.ws English Dictionary

breathful

breathful adjective: that breathes; alive.

Adjective

breathful (comparative more breathful, superlative most breathful)

  1. That breathes; alive.
    • They for nought would from their work refrain, Nor let his speeches come unto their ear; And eke the breathful bellows blew amain Like to the northern wind, that none could hear:1932, Edmund Spenser, Edwin Almiron Greenlaw, Charles Grosvenor Osgood, The Works of Edmund Spenser - Volume 1, page 365
    • the universe as body, mass as energy and energy as mass, became transformed to spirit when, through us, originating laughter found a name for everything that is and nourished into breathful form.1989, Robert Pack, Before it Vanishes: A Packet for Professor Pagels, page 78
  2. (obsolete) Full of odour; fragrant.
    • Fresh Costmarie, and breathfull Camomill.1591, Edmund Spenser, Complaints
    • Men came, they partook, and they breathed of ramps. They had left their telltale and breathful mark.1968, The Herbarist - Issues 34-37, page 32
  3. Full of breath, produced by the breath; breathy.
    • He spoke a queer, jerky kind of American that I can only describe as breathful.1938, Aletta Lewis, They Call Them Savages, page 7
    • He smelled the rank odor of the man and heard his breathful muttering.1946, Edward Kimbrough, Night Fire, page 63
  4. Focused on control of one's breathing.
    • The breathful twist on timing also adds a touch of novelty and a bit of distraction when facing more difficult topics.1990, Gerald Goodman, The Talk Book, page 240
    • Breathful movement practices such as Chi Kung/ Qigong (Lam Kam Chuen 1999) have been used successfully by group psychotherapists to energize and soothe, even in settings where psychological distress is intense (Potik and Schreiber 2013).2013, Jill Hayes, Soul and Spirit in Dance Movement Psychotherapy, page 92
  5. Characteristic of a breath; breath-like.
    • The poem celebrates itself, wedding the body's cry with the mind's linguistic design; it is a metaphor for the literal human voice transformed into poetic speech. One might imagine that in the beginning was the letter O and its breathful sound.1985 Robert Pack, Affirming Limits: Essays on Mortality, Choice, and Poetic Form, page 59
    • Individual wind instruments do not get obscured during the interplay of the tutti orchestra. Each section appears in naturally airy, breathful, resonant relief.1994, The Absolute Sound - Volume 19, Issues 99-102, page 94
  6. Not breathless; breathing easily.
    • The end result of the Princeton experiment was that a startled but breathful Rutgers team downed a hell-raising breathless Princeton squad, 6-4.1977, Stan Fischler, Steve Namm, Stan Fischler's sports stumpers, page 120
    • My face relaxed as a smile broke my tension. I hitched my pack up, stood straight, and walked with measured, breathful steps.1995, Common Lives, Lesbian Lives - Issues 53-56, page 112
  7. Relaxed and quiet.
    • After the noon-blaze, in the breathful eve, The many 'folk of holiday ' come out ; And lovers saunter on the pier, and leave The gossip of their friends, to walk about1874, London Society, page 49
    • Lying awake with back that burned beneath its lotioned rags, when lights were low, in the breathful silence of the hospital, he registered in his heart a terrible oath that he would die ere he would again be made such hideous sport for his enemies.1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 287

Noun

breathful (plural breathfuls or breathsful)

  1. That which is smelled or sensed in one breath.
    • Once you've swirled, close your eyes and take a good breathful of the wine.1999, Dennis Overstreet, Overstreet's New Wine Guide: Celebrating the New Wave in Winemaking
    • Before my taxi arrived I went to her wardrobe and pressed my face into her dresses, hoping to keep a breathful of her with me.2000, Gretta Mulrooney, Marble Heart, page 270
  2. A quantity that is inhaled in one breath.
    • Approximately I/5 of the oxygen in each breathful of air is absorbed by the body.1943, The Bluejackets' Manual - Volume 11, Part 1943, page 1096
    • The planter caught a big breathful of anger, but Charlie went straight on: “I rather wouldn't, mais I will do it for you;—just the same, like Monsieur le Compte would say, 'Charlie, you old fool, I want to shange houses wid you.'1987, Donald McQuade, The Harper American Literature - Volume 2, page 686
  3. The amount spoken on one breath.
    • Estelle lay in bed, groggily complaining against the gas light, and Miriam teased her, and Estelle told her to quit or get the devil out of here, but Miriam wouldn't quit, and Estelle thrashed around and pushed her and soon they had a little fight and then they both lay and told about their men...1938, Sidney Meller, Roots in the Sky, page 144
    • "The crisis of our time," he writes, "is one of which the entire cause lies in the hearts of men," and only poetry can cure this "failure of desire" because "only poetry, exploring the spirit of man, is capable of creating in a breathful of words the common good men have become incapable of...1970, Quincy Wright, A Study of War, page 389
  4. A quantity that is exhaled in one breath.
    • A fifteen-month gap separates the recording of the "The First Part" from "The Third Part," but the music could just as easily be two bubbles blown from the same fish on the same breathful of water.2003, Coda - Issues 307-318, page 28
    • And, cordially, putting a brotherly arm around his visitor, he would blow a breathful of ether in his face.2014, Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power, page 159

Examples of breathful in a sentence

  • Against the window her lips press a row of breathful O's until, due to both a quick and vengeful draft, her candle's flame lilts, disappears.1980, Dennis Shramek, Sly Ohio, page 21:
  • It was the breathful stillness of a tropical afternoon.1969, Australian Literary Studies, page 383:
  • And I decide to write to you as soon as I get a breathful respite.1984, Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, Nemicandra Jaina, Pāyā patra tumhārā:
  • Now I plunge my pen against the page and scribble toward a purpose unperceived, for now, in breathful, placid frame, I am no more a poet than a rose;1985, St. Andrews review - Issue 29, page 47:

Forms of breathful

Adjective
comparativemore breathful
superlativemost breathful
Noun
pluralbreathfuls
pluralbreathsful

Origin of breathful

From breath + -ful.

Questions about breathful

What does breathful mean?
Breathful means that breathes; alive.
How do you use breathful in a sentence?
Against the window her lips press a row of breathful O's until, due to both a quick and vengeful draft, her candle's flame lilts, disappears.
What part of speech is breathful?
Breathful can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near breathful in the dictionary

  1. breathes one's last breath
  2. breathes out
  3. breathes upon
  4. breathest
  5. breatheth
  6. breathful
  7. breathfuls
  8. breathhold
  9. breathholding
  10. breathholds
  11. breathier

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: breathful (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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