wheeze

/ʍiːz/

wheeze verb: to breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.

Verb

wheeze (third-person singular simple present wheezes, present participle wheezing, simple past and past participle wheezed)

To breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.
- If the air smelled even faintly of dog, Lionel coughed, wheezed and sneezed.2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age: A Romance (Fourth Estate, paperback edition, 443)
(slang) To convulse with laughter; to become breathless due to intense laughing.
- Mrs. Hearty began to shake and wheeze with laughter, and Millie stood looking at Bindle.1932, Herbert George Jenkins, Bindle Omnibus, page 408
- He began to wheeze again, and tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks. Nate was laughing, too, infected by Check's contagious wheezing.1973, Robert Boston, A Thorn for the Flesh, page 30
To make a sound that resembles the sound of human wheezing.
- "Even the fish know it; they don't rise to the bait any more and the birds are scared - hear how they wheeze and cry as they seek the land."1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 184
- One boy in a black tuxedo and red shoes plays a wheezing accordion like a roadside undertaker.2009, J. P. White, Every Boat Turns South, page 112

Noun

wheeze (plural wheezes)

A piping or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration.
An ordinary whisper exaggerated so as to produce the hoarse sound known as the "stage whisper"; a forcible whisper with some admixture of tone.
(Ireland, UK, informal) An ulterior scheme or plan.
- Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[V]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
- ‘It’s got a file and rope ladder in it and if you was a bit older I’d make you eat them both raw for trying to put such a moth-eaten old wheeze over on me.’1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 90
(slang) Something very humorous or laughable.
- The new comedy is a wheeze.
- You think you're going to win? That's a real wheeze!
Synonyms:

joke
A sound that resembles a human wheezing.
- At the same time I felt them fall over my brows — time to get a cut — the engine gave a final wheeze and died.2016, Heather Hildenbrand, A Bet Worth Making

wheeze meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Telugu and Malayalam

wheeze in Tamil

ஊசு மூச்சு, குறுமூச்சு, இரைப்பு, ஊதல் ஒலி, ஊதுமூச்சு, குழல்ஒலி

wheeze in Urdu

دم پھولنا

wheeze in Telugu

a wheeze or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration, commonly seen in Asthmatics: పిల్లికూత pillikūta

wheeze in Malayalam

gasp, breathe noisily, whistle: കഷ്ടപ്പെട്ടു ശ്വസിക്കുക, സശബ്ദം ശ്വസിക്കുക, കുറുകുറുക്കുക, കുറുങ്ങുക, കുറുട്ടുക, വലിക്കുക
croak, rasp, whistle: കുറുകുറുക്കൽ, കുറുങ്ങൽ, കിറുകിറുപ്പ്, കിറുകിറശബ്ദം കറകറശബ്ദം, തവളകരച്ചിൽ, മാക്രികരച്ചിൽ
ruse, tactic, ploy: സൂത്രം, കൗശലം, തന്ത്രപൂർവ്വമായ നീക്കം, അടവ്, അടവുനയം, കുചോദ്യം

More languagesFewer languages

wheeze in Kannada: ಏದುಸಿರು ಬಿಡು, ಮೇಲುಸಿರು ಬಿಡು
wheeze in Tagalog: umagahas, agahas
wheeze in Indonesian: mengi
wheeze in Persian: خس خس xes-xes

Examples of wheeze in a sentence

Elsie wheezed, laughter swelling her bosom.1988, Elizabeth Oldfield, Beware of Married Men, page 47:
The man wheezed, his laughter like an accordion whine.1993, Richard S. Wheeler, The Two Medicine River, page 221:
The main point of fuel duty, though, is as a fiscal wheeze: it made up 5% of the tax take in 2010.2011 November 19, “Road rage; High petrol prices hurt, but will not throttle the economy”, in The Economist:
The Constitution cult in the US—deliberately stoked in the early twentieth century in a part as a bulwark against socialism—is a nastily brilliant wheeze by capitalism's apologists.2022, China Miéville, chapter 4, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC:

All 29 example sentences with wheeze

Synonyms of wheeze

joke

Forms of wheeze

Verb
third-person singular present	wheezes
present participle	wheezing
past participle	wheezed
past	wheezed
Noun
plural	wheezes

Past tense of wheeze: wheezed

Origin of wheeze

From Middle English whesen, perhaps from Old Norse hvæsa (“to hiss”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱwes- (“to pant”).

Words formed from wheeze

wheeze rate

Phrases with wheeze

wheeze rates

Words that rhyme with wheeze

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wheeze

What does wheeze mean?: Wheeze means to breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.
What is wheeze in Tamil?: Wheeze in Tamil is ஊசு மூச்சு, குறுமூச்சு, இரைப்பு. See Wheeze meaning in Tamil.
How do you use wheeze in a sentence?: Elsie wheezed, laughter swelling her bosom.
What part of speech is wheeze?: Wheeze can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce wheeze?: Wheeze is pronounced /ʍiːz/.
What is the past tense of wheeze?: The past tense of wheeze is wheezed.

Words near wheeze in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: wheeze (page history and authors); wheeze (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wheeze (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); పిల్లికూత (Telugu) (page history and authors); wheeze (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); wheeze (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-wheeze.wav.

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