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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.

See Examples For:

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 is entirely destitute of gills, or any similar aperture, but respires and also spouts water through a pipe of semi-circular form placed on the upper part of the head.

From Natural History in Anecdote Illustrating the nature, habits, manners and customs of animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, etc., etc., etc. by Various

Never slack they; none respires, Dancing round their Centrall fires.

From Democritus Platonissans by Henry More

"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

When tubercular formation becomes established, the disease may be communicated through the medium of the atmosphere, the infectious influence depending upon the noxious particles respired from the lungs of the diseased animal.

From Sheep, Swine, and Poultry Embracing the History and Varieties of Each; The Best Modes of Breeding; Their Feeding and Management; Together with etc. by Robert Jennings

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

Pen Gray drew one long, deep, restful breath as if wide-awake, and then slowly and as if grudgingly respired.

From !Tention A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War by Charles Mills Sheldon

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

The mitochondrion is thought to have been a respiring bacterium and the chlo­roplast to have been a photosynthesiz­ing relative of the cyanobacteria.

From Scientific American ● Jan. 1, 2013

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




Vocabulary lists containing respire


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