breathful
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: breathfuls
form: breathsful
Etymology: From breath + -ful.
Senses: examples: text: Once you've swirled, close your eyes and take a good breathful of the wine.
ref: 1999, Dennis Overstreet, Overstreet's New Wine Guide: Celebrating the New Wave in Winemaking:
text: 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.
ref: 2000, Gretta Mulrooney, Marble Heart, page 270:
text: I like the church, which seems to be holding a breathful of vivid memories whenever I'm in there alone.
ref: 2009, Katharine McMahon, A Way Through The Woods:
glosses: That which is smelled or sensed in one breath.
examples: text: Approximately I/5 of the oxygen in each breathful of air is absorbed by the body.
ref: 1943, The Bluejackets' Manual - Volume 11, Part 1943, page 1096:
text: 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.'
ref: 1987, Donald McQuade, The Harper American Literature - Volume 2, page 686:
text: Samantha took in a breathful of ocean air, then scrambled farther.
ref: 1994, Jennifer Greene, Bothered, page 110:
text: A crackling cloud billowed up and Elfloq had drawn in several breathfuls before he could stagger back out of range.
ref: 2001, Sean Wallace, Strange Pleasures, page 61:
text: A single breathful draws in more air molecules than there are breathfuls of air in Earth's entire atmosphere.
ref: 2017, Astrophysics For People in a Hurry:
glosses: A quantity that is inhaled in one breath.
examples: text: 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, Estelle a breathful about her Dick, Miriam the next breathful about her Sammy.
ref: 1938, Sidney Meller, Roots in the Sky, page 144:
text: "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 imagining for themselves."
ref: 1970, Quincy Wright, A Study of War, page 389:
text: The arbitrary time limit measured by breathsful of talk not only protects the pair or group from flooding but can also comfort the nervous disclosure by providing a limited demand.
ref: 1990, Gerald Goodman, The Talk Book:
glosses: The amount spoken on one breath.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2003, Coda - Issues 307-318, page 28:
text: And, cordially, putting a brotherly arm around his visitor, he would blow a breathful of ether in his face.
ref: 2014, Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power, page 159:
glosses: A quantity that is exhaled in one breath.