kiss of life
- noun
- /kɪs ʌv laɪf/
:
respiración boca a boca
- During the emergency, he remembered to give the kiss of life to the accident victim.
Examples
-
Sarah, you're gonna pass out, and I'm gonna have to give you the kiss of life.
-
In a panic, the lifeguard performed the kiss of life to help the drowning swimmer.
-
After she lost consciousness, paramedics quickly administered the kiss of life to revive her.
Synonyms
88
3.3
An emergency way to help someone when their heart or breathing stops by pressing the chest and giving breaths
15
4.8
Giving air into another person's mouth when they are not breathing
4
4.1
To breathe air into someone's lungs using your mouth when they are not breathing
1
3.7
A medical emergency method using chest pushes and mouth breaths to restart a person's heart and breathing
An emergency procedure to restart breathing and blood flow
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'kiss' and 'life' make the basic idea — a kiss that gives or restores life — fairly inferable, so learners who know the words can often guess it means something that revitalizes. However, the meaning depends on a metaphorical/cultural association with resuscitation (mouth-to-mouth) and is used figuratively, so the exact sense and usage are not fully predictable for a B1 learner without prior exposure.
Etymology
Kiss of life comes from an old rescue move when someone breathed into another person's mouth as a kind of kiss to make them breathe again. That's why it means 'mouth-to-mouth resuscitation'.