Word.ws English Dictionary

breeze

/bɹiːz/

breeze noun: a light, gentle wind.

Noun (1)

breeze (plural breezes)

  1. A light, gentle wind.
    • The breeze rustled the papers on her desk.
    • Into a gradual calm the breezes sink.1793, William Wordsworth, An Evening Walk
  2. (figuratively) Any activity that is easy, not testing or difficult.
    • After studying Latin, Spanish was a breeze.
    • The eight-minute connection to East Midlands Railway is a breeze. The train is 170208, its First Class downrated, so I enjoy the wider seats for the hour to Ely, where I arrive a couple of minutes early.2025 October 15, 'Mystery Shopper', “About Anglia... and high scores”, in RAIL, number 1046, page 54
  3. Wind blowing across a cricket match, whatever its strength.
  4. An excited or ruffled state of feeling; a flurry of excitement; a disturbance; a quarrel.
    • The discovery produced a breeze.
  5. A brief workout for a racehorse.

Verb (1)

breeze (third-person singular simple present breezes, present participle breezing, simple past and past participle breezed)

  1. (intransitive, usually) To move casually, in a carefree manner.
    • Resting most of their first-choice players for Sunday's vital Euro 2024 qualifier against Croatia, Wales started with four debutants and breezed into an early lead thanks to headers by captain Ben Davies and Kieffer Moore.2023 October 11, Dafydd Pritchard, “Wales 4-0 Gibraltar”, in BBC Sport
  2. (intransitive) To blow gently.
    • She's sitting opposite a window that's gently breezing into her face, wafting her hair into cover-girl perfection ...2014 January 21, Hermione Hoby, “Julia Roberts interview for August: Osage County – 'I might actually go to hell for this ...': Julia Roberts reveals why her violent, Oscar-nominated performance in...
  3. (intransitive) To take a horse on a light run in order to understand the running characteristics of the horse and to observe it while under motion.
  4. (intransitive) To swim near the surface of the water, causing ripples in the surface.
    • The first was a school of medium-sized ( 10-pound average ) fish that breezed frequently but bit poorly.1970, Commercial Fisheries Review - Volume 32, page 37
    • The Queen Mary stood by while a speedboat moved ahead of a breezing school of tuna to deploy the sound projector and a sonobuoy (Figure 6).1979, Frank T. Awbrey, Thomas Duffy, WIlliam E. Evans, C. Scott Johnson, Wesley Parks, John DeBeer, The Tuna/Porpoise Problem: Dedicated Vessel Research Program, page 10

Noun (2)

breeze (plural breezes)

  1. (intransitive) A gadfly; a horsefly; a strong-bodied dipterous insect of the family Tabanidae.

Verb (2)

breeze (third-person singular simple present breezes, present participle breezing, simple past and past participle breezed)

  1. (intransitive) To buzz.

Noun (3)

breeze (plural breezes)

  1. (intransitive) Ashes and residue of coal or charcoal, usually from a furnace. See Wikipedia article on Clinker.

Proper noun capitalized: Breeze

Breeze (plural Breezes)

  1. A surname.

breeze meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

breeze in Hindi

a light, gentle wind
समीर samīr
blow gently
समीर samīr

breeze in Tamil

தென்றல், மென்காற்று, பூங்காற்று

breeze in Urdu

a light, gentle wind
نسیم nasīm

breeze in Bengali

মৃদু বাতাস
More languagesFewer languages
breeze in Telugu
పైరగాలి pairagāli
breeze in Malayalam
ഇളംകാറ്റ്
breeze in Kannada
ನಸುಗಾಳಿ
breeze in Gujarati
સમીર samīr
breeze in Sanskrit
समीर samīra
breeze in Assamese
বা ba, মালয়া-বতাহ maloya-botah
breeze in Tagalog
simoy
breeze in Arabic
نَسِيم nasīm, هَوَاء hawāʔ, نَسَمَة nasama, سَهْل sahl
breeze in Persian
نسیم nasim
breeze in Thai
ลมโชย lom choi

Examples of breeze in a sentence

  • The tree was swaying in the breeze and tapping on the window pane.
  • A breeze came in through the open window and wafted her sensuous perfume into my eager nostrils.
  • Pin down the tablecloth, so it doesn't blow away in the breeze.

All 40 example sentences with breeze

Synonyms of breeze

All synonyms of breeze

Forms of breeze

Noun
pluralbreezes
alternative formbrize
alternative formbriess
alternative formbreese
Verb
third-person singular presentbreezes
present participlebreezing
past participlebreezed
pastbreezed
Proper noun
pluralBreezes

Plural of breeze: breezes

Origin of breeze

From the earlier (nautical) term brise, brize (“breeze”), from Middle English brees (“wind”). Ultimate origin obscure. Variously supposed to derive from a Germanic source like Saterland Frisian Briese (“breeze”), West Frisian brys (“a cool wind”), Dutch bries (“breeze”), early Dutch brysen (“to blow cool and fresh”), or from Spanish brisa (“northeast wind”). The earliest attestations are in Middle English brees (1460), Catalan brisa, and Italian brezza (all in 15th century), with Spanish (1504) and Portuguese briza (16th century) following closely after. The aforementioned Dutch cognates and French brise, however, are attested later than the term in English. The only internal hypothesis for any of those languages is a modification of Old Occitan bisa (“strong wind”), which is not widely accepted. Compare also Albanian breshër (“hail”).

From Middle English brese, from Old English brēosa, variant of Old English brimsa (“gadfly”), from Proto-Germanic *bremusī (“gadfly”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerem- (“to make a noise, buzz, hum”). Cognate with Dutch brems (“horsefly, warblefly”), German Bremse (“gadfly, horsefly”), Danish bremse (“gadfly, horsefly”), Swedish broms (“gadfly, horsefly”). Related also to Middle English brimse (“gadfly”), French brize (“gadfly”), Old English bremman (“to rage, roar”), Latin fremō (“roar, snort, growl, grumble”). See also bream.

Probably from French braise (“burning coals”).

Words formed from breeze

Phrases with breeze

Words that rhyme with breeze

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about breeze

What does breeze mean?
Breeze means a light, gentle wind.
What is breeze in Hindi?
Breeze in Hindi is समीर (samīr). See Breeze meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is breeze?
Breeze can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce breeze?
Breeze is pronounced /bɹiːz/.
What is the plural of breeze?
The plural of breeze is breezes.

Words near breeze in the dictionary

  1. Breens
  2. brees
  3. breese
  4. breeses
  5. Breeza
  6. breeze
  7. breeze off
  8. breeze past
  9. breeze through
  10. breeze up
  11. breeze-block

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: breeze (page history and authors); Breeze (page history and authors); breeze (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); breeze (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); పైరగాలి (Telugu) (page history and authors); breeze (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); breeze (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); સમીર (Gujarati) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-breeze.ogg, en-au-breeze.ogg.

Cite this entry: “breeze.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/breeze. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.