"take a breather" meaning in English

See take a breather in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-take a breather.ogg Forms: takes a breather [present, singular, third-person], taking a breather [participle, present], took a breather [past], taken a breather [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|take<,,took,taken> a breather}} take a breather (third-person singular simple present takes a breather, present participle taking a breather, simple past took a breather, past participle taken a breather)
  1. (idiomatic) To take a break; to pause or relax briefly. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: catch one's breath, get some air Translations (to take a break): hengähtää (Finnish), souffler (French), eine Pause machen (German), odsapywać [imperfective] (Polish), odsapnąć [perfective] (Polish), передохнуть (peredoxnutʹ) (Russian), hacer una pausa (Spanish)

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "takes a breather",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taking a breather",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "took a breather",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taken a breather",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "take<,,took,taken> a breather"
      },
      "expansion": "take a breather (third-person singular simple present takes a breather, present participle taking a breather, simple past took a breather, past participle taken a breather)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English light verb constructions",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
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        },
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        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with French translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with German translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Polish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Russian translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Spanish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Why don't we stop and take a breather before we continue?",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To take a break; to pause or relax briefly."
      ],
      "id": "en-take_a_breather-en-verb-LDfM96ry",
      "links": [
        [
          "take a break",
          "take a break"
        ],
        [
          "pause",
          "pause"
        ],
        [
          "relax",
          "relax"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To take a break; to pause or relax briefly."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "catch one's breath"
        },
        {
          "word": "get some air"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to take a break",
          "word": "hengähtää"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "to take a break",
          "word": "souffler"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "to take a break",
          "word": "eine Pause machen"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "to take a break",
          "tags": [
            "imperfective"
          ],
          "word": "odsapywać"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "to take a break",
          "tags": [
            "perfective"
          ],
          "word": "odsapnąć"
        },
        {
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "roman": "peredoxnutʹ",
          "sense": "to take a break",
          "word": "передохнуть"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "to take a break",
          "word": "hacer una pausa"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-take a breather.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/04/En-au-take_a_breather.ogg/En-au-take_a_breather.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/En-au-take_a_breather.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "take a breather"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "takes a breather",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taking a breather",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "took a breather",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "taken a breather",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {
        "1": "take<,,took,taken> a breather"
      },
      "expansion": "take a breather (third-person singular simple present takes a breather, present participle taking a breather, simple past took a breather, past participle taken a breather)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "catch one's breath"
    },
    {
      "word": "get some air"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
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        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English light verb constructions",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Finnish translations",
        "Terms with French translations",
        "Terms with German translations",
        "Terms with Polish translations",
        "Terms with Russian translations",
        "Terms with Spanish translations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Why don't we stop and take a breather before we continue?",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To take a break; to pause or relax briefly."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "take a break",
          "take a break"
        ],
        [
          "pause",
          "pause"
        ],
        [
          "relax",
          "relax"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To take a break; to pause or relax briefly."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-take a breather.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/04/En-au-take_a_breather.ogg/En-au-take_a_breather.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/En-au-take_a_breather.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to take a break",
      "word": "hengähtää"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "to take a break",
      "word": "souffler"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "to take a break",
      "word": "eine Pause machen"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "to take a break",
      "tags": [
        "imperfective"
      ],
      "word": "odsapywać"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "to take a break",
      "tags": [
        "perfective"
      ],
      "word": "odsapnąć"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "roman": "peredoxnutʹ",
      "sense": "to take a break",
      "word": "передохнуть"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "to take a break",
      "word": "hacer una pausa"
    }
  ],
  "word": "take a breather"
}

Download raw JSONL data for take a breather meaning in English (2.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-10 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (df33d17 and 4ed51a5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.