lung buster
1
8.9
- noun
- /lʌŋ ˈbʌstər/
- Slang
:
actividad extenuante
- Climbing that steep hill felt like a lung buster; my chest was burning by the time I reached the top.
Examples
-
Not just little clear-your-throat coughs, but big wracking lung-busters.
Fiction book (2001) -
She enjoys participating in lung busters like obstacle courses that really challenge her stamina.
-
The marathon was a real lung buster; I struggled to catch my breath at the finish line.
How Strenuous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound pairs 'lung' (breathing organ) with 'buster' (something that breaks or defeats), so a learner who knows both words can plausibly infer a sense of something that heavily strains the lungs—i.e., a very strenuous activity. However, 'buster' here is used metaphorically in informal compounding, so the precise idiomatic sense ('an activity that leaves you breathless') may not be fully predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Lung buster may come from the image of a task that seems to 'bust' the lung, leaving you gasping for air. People used it for very hard exercises that make you breathe very hard, so it now means 'a very hard physical activity that makes you breathe very hard'.