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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

wheeze.

To breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.

6 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ʍiːz//wiːz/
  1. To breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.

  2. To convulse with laughter; to become breathless due to intense laughing.

    slang
  3. To make a sound that resembles the sound of human wheezing.

Where this word comes from

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

noun/ʍiːz//wiːz/
  1. A piping or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration.

  2. An ordinary whisper exaggerated so as to produce the hoarse sound known as the "stage whisper"; a forcible whisper with some admixture of tone.

  3. An ulterior scheme or plan.

    Ireland · UK · informal
  4. Something very humorous or laughable.

    slang
    The new comedy is a wheeze.
    You think you're going to win? That's a real wheeze!
  5. A sound that resembles a human wheezing.

Where this word comes from

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

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.