Word.ws English Dictionary

underbreathe

underbreathe verb: to hypoventilate.

Verb

underbreathe (third-person singular simple present underbreathes, present participle underbreathing, simple past and past participle underbreathed)

  1. To hypoventilate.
    • Buteyko believed that teaching people with asthma to underbreathe could raise their carbon dioxide levels and dilate their airways without medication.2014, Sarah Brewer, Overcoming Asthma: The Complete Complementary Health Program, →ISBN
    • Traumatized clients who tend to underbreathe (hypoventilate) or overbreathe (hyperventilate) can benefit from this chapter.2015, Pat Ogden, Janina Fisher, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, →ISBN

Forms of underbreathe

third-person singular presentunderbreathes
present participleunderbreathing
past participleunderbreathed
pastunderbreathed

Origin of underbreathe

From under- + breathe.

Questions about underbreathe

What does underbreathe mean?
Underbreathe means to hypoventilate.
What part of speech is underbreathe?
Underbreathe is a verb.
What is the past tense of underbreathe?
The past tense of underbreathe is underbreathed.

Words near underbreathe in the dictionary

  1. underbranch
  2. underbranches
  3. underbreak
  4. underbreaks
  5. underbreath
  6. underbreathe
  7. underbreathed
  8. underbreathes
  9. underbreathing
  10. underbreaths
  11. underbred

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underbreathe (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underbreathe.wav.

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