BREATHLESS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Breathless

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/brˈɛθləs/ Listen

adjective

Breathless adj.

Spent with labor or violent action; out of breath.

Not breathing; holding the breath, on account of fear, expectation, or intense interest; attended with a holding of the breath; as, breathless attention. "But breathless, as we grow when feeling most."

Dead; as, a breathless body.

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Etymology of 'Breathless'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Breathless" Quotes from Famous Books

... its "pain-giving" capacity to the full, is now impossible. Still, the reader of Clarendon's Life, Pepys's Diary, and Burnet's History, to name only popular books, will have no difficulty in entering into the spirit of the performance. As a poem it is rough in execution, careless, breathless. A rugged style was then in vogue. Even Milton could write his lines to the Cambridge Carrier somewhat in this manner. Marvell has nothing of the magnificence of Dryden, or of the finished malice of Pope. He plays the part, and it is sincerely played, of the old, honest ...

— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... there was a silence—breathless, strained, pregnant with the promise of tragedy. Then the silence was rent by Lawler's voice, dry, ...

— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... that with a plunge that echoed from cliff to cliff. The Indians were profoundly superstitious. All Indians are not so, but these Indians were. They waited not for more. They turned and fled as if all the evil spirits in the Rocky Mountains were chasing them. They reached their wigwams breathless, and told their squaws that one of the spirits of a mountain stream had sat among the branches of a tree and sung to them. It had told them that the right time for attacking their foes had not yet come. Then it sang them a war-song ...

— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... calmness affected Mrs. Conroth and Betty Gallup much as the store idlers had been affected when they tried to bait him—their exasperation increased. Cap'n Amazon's utter disregard of what they said (for Betty did her share of the talking, relieving the Lady from Poughkeepsie when she was breathless) continued unabated. It was a situation that, at another time, ...

— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... with all possible speed. I drew up for an instant, and inquired of him how matters were going at the front. He replied, "Everything is lost; but all will be right when you get there"; yet notwithstanding this expression of confidence in me, the parson at once resumed his breathless pace to the rear. At Newtown I was obliged to make a circuit to the left, to get round the village. I could not pass through it, the streets were so crowded, but meeting on this detour Major McKinley, of Crook's ...

— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

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