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Glite Dictionary
😮‍💨 To breathe fast 😮‍💨 To make breathe fast
to hyperventilate

to hyperventilate

4 7.1
Make someone breathe too quickly and deeply, often for medical reasons
  • verb
  • /ˌhaɪpərˈvɛntɪˌleɪt/
translation icon : hacer hiperventilar (a alguien)
  • The one action you can take that will reduce your apparent BAC on the breathalyzer test is to hyperventilate before taking the test.

Examples

  • Are you hyperventilating the patient?

    The Man with Two Brains (1983)

  • I'd be a fool to buy flood insurance just because a bunch of hyperventilating salesmen are blathering about reports churned up under the GIGO principle.

    Blog text (2)

  • I look for an empty chair so I can hyperventilate in relative comfort.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • So, you can turn the Internet back on, or I do, and we put somebody here on a 24-hour shift, and you can kick, scream, and hyperventilate.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • You don't see Joe blows getting their knickers in a knot when John Jones gets on the cover of a sports magazine, but chicks get in a dizzy and hyperventilate when they see a supermodel on a magazine cover.

    Blog text (28)

  • In an emergency, it is vital to hyperventilate the patient to ensure adequate oxygen intake.

  • If a person starts to hyperventilate, it is essential to calm them down and help regulate their breathing.

  • During the simulation, the instructors instructed us to hyperventilate the mannequin to practice proper resuscitation techniques.

How Much

to hyperventilate
4 7.1
to panic
272 2.3
to alarm
133 1.9
to startle
131 3.7
to calm
962 1.0

Surface Forms

hyperventilate infinitive
hyperventilated past
hyperventilated past participle
hyperventilating present participle
hyperventilates third person singular

Morphology

hyperventilate = ventilate (semi-transparent) = hyper + ventilate

The prefix hyper- is transparent, but the causative medical sense is still specialized and not fully obvious from the base verb alone.

Etymology

Hyperventilate comes from hyper- 'over' and ventilate 'move air', so to hyperventilate someone is to make them breathe too much or too fast. In medical settings this may be done on purpose to change the air inside a patient's lungs.