last breath
31
6.1
- noun
:
último aliento
- She held her mother's hand as she took her last breath.
So when he takes his last breath, they're freaking out.
- So when he takes his last breath, they're freaking out.
- And, you know, in her last breaths, she says, look after my son Roberto.
- Now you shall draw your last breath.
- I held her hand when she took her last breath.
- I approached the guy, he was taking his last breaths.
- You know it ain't over until, well, you take your last breath.
- I know exactly who they are and I will stand to my last breath.
- That's the pain I felt as I was dying, taking my last breath.
- The traumatizing part of it was watching her take her last breath.
- That's why you go there is to do that mission only and to know that you gave your last breath trying to save another human.
- When my dad died, I was with him, literally with my father when he took his last breath.
- As long as I remember that it's a journey, as long as I remember that my journey is not over until the last breath, then I can keep enjoying it.
- I would like to also breathe my last breath on that sexy Red Planet.
Examples
-
I hope my last breath is a sigh of relief.
Academic text (2015) -
I heard him take his last breath.
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And he took his last breath and it felt like my heart stopped.
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Your father spoke to you with his last breath.
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What would you say with your last breath?
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The world became a much better place the second he took his last breath.
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With his last breath, he was still pulling away his mother's hand.
Fiction book (2002) -
God knows when we will draw our last breath, but we don't have a clue.
Blog text (31) -
And, you know, in her last breaths, she says, look after my son Roberto.
-
You've never held your best friend's head in your lap... and watch him gasp his last breath lookin' to you for help.
Synonyms
7
6.3
A final effort before something ends or fails
1
8.1
The final moment before something stops, often the last breath a person takes at the end of life
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the final breath before dying' is directly derivable from combining 'last' (final) with 'breath' (air drawn in or expelled), so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer the MWE. The adjective+noun composition is cross-linguistically common and predictable, even though the phrase is a conventional collocation in contexts of death.
Etymology
The phrase last breath comes from the simple image of a person taking one final breath, their last, just before they die. So, it means 'the moment of death' or the final breath a person takes.