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respire

[ri-spahyuhr] / rɪˈspaɪər /
VERB
breathe
Synonyms


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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Tiny pores on a leaf’s underside are arranged to take in carbon dioxide and respire water, allowing the plant to transform sunlight into energy.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 23, 2021

On average, pregnant women suffer twice as many bites, as they respire 20% more carbon dioxide, and have a marginally elevated body temperature.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 20, 2019

Some land invertebrates, such as earthworms, live in moist environments and can respire across their skin if it stays moist.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2018

But at night, plants and animals respire and take away too much oxygen, said the study’s lead author, Denise Breitburg, a marine ecologist at SERC.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 11, 2015

The usual way of looking at them is as enslaved creatures, captured to supply ATP for cells unable to respire on their own, or to provide carbohydrate and oxygen for cells unequipped for photosynthesis.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas

The environment in which the animal lives greatly determines how an animal respires.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

"Culture is his air and water; he respires ideas, and whistles and hums as he does so," Leonard wrote.

From US News ● Sep. 18, 2015

A rat respires 100 to 200 times a minute, a cat 20 to 30 times, an adult human 16 to 24 times,* a horse 6 to 10 times.

From Time Magazine Archive

He also respires in like manner, inasmuch as thought and respiration act correspondently.

From Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom by John Ager

In the water the amphibian larva respires by means of gills and gill slits.

From Hormones and Heredity by J. T. Cunningham

"These associations may help explain why some organic molecules remain protected in soils while others are more vulnerable to being broken down and respired by microbes."

From Science Daily ● Feb. 9, 2026

As oxygen from the environment combines with the sugars in patats, it gets respired from the roots as carbon dioxide and water.

From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2021

Not a breast respired freely, except perchance that of the old man who alone stood in the deck with the two combatants, a stern second.

From The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 6 August 1906 by Various

III.—Analysis of Atmospheric Air, and its Division into two Elastic Fluids;     one fit for Respiration, the other incapable of being respired, 32 CHAP.

From Elements of Chemistry, In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries by Antoine Lavoisier

Invisible and subtile particles emanate from odorous bodies, and are brought by the respired air in contact with the terminal filaments of the olfactory nerve, upon which an agreeable or disagreeable impression is produced.

From A Treatise on Physiology and Hygiene For Educational Institutions and General Readers by Joseph Chrisman Hutchison

When respiring animals were only a few cells thick, they could count on diffusion to satisfy their needs for oxygen.

From Scientific American ● May 6, 2019

Their role as predators can even help with carbon dynamics, keeping carbon locked up in marine sediments, or by controlling the amount of respiring biomass in our seas.

From Salon ● Dec. 15, 2018

Roberts’s abdominal cavity looked like the inside of a mossy, yellow cave lit up by miners’ headlamps; vasculature appeared like streaks of mineral ore, the liver like a respiring troglobite.

From The New Yorker ● Sep. 19, 2016

As carbon pours into the bucket through photosynthesis, it constantly leaks out through other processes, mostly decomposition and respiring plants and microbes.

From US News ● Apr. 18, 2011

First, when Martian soil was mixed with a sterile organic soup from Earth, something in the soil chemically broke down the soup—almost as if there were respiring microbes metabolizing a food package from Earth.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan


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