PERSPIRE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does perspire mean? 

• PERSPIRE (verb)
  The verb PERSPIRE has 1 sense:

1. excrete perspiration through the pores in the skin

  Familiarity information: PERSPIRE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERSPIRE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they perspire    ... he / she / it perspires   
Past simple: perspired   
Past participle: perspired   
-ing form: perspiring   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Excrete perspiration through the pores in the skin

Classified under:

Verbs of grooming, dressing and bodily care

Synonyms:

perspire; sudate; sweat

Context example:

Exercise makes one sweat

Hypernyms (to "perspire" is one way to...):

egest; eliminate; excrete; pass (eliminate from the body)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "perspire"):

swelter (suffer from intense heat)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Sentence example:

Sam and Sue perspire

Derivation:

perspiration (salty fluid secreted by sweat glands)

perspiration (the process of the sweat glands of the skin secreting a salty fluid)

 Context examples 

I've seen that theer bald head of his a perspiring in the sun, Mas'r Davy, till I a'most thowt it would have melted away.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Of course, they could squirm as they perished, as the socialists squirmed, as the speaker on the platform and the perspiring crowd were squirming even now as they counselled together for some new device with which to minimize the penalties of living and outwit the Cosmos.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We varied the legal character of these proceedings by going to see some perspiring Wax-work, in Fleet Street (melted, I should hope, these twenty years); and by visiting Miss Linwood's Exhibition, which I remember as a Mausoleum of needlework, favourable to self-examination and repentance; and by inspecting the Tower of London; and going to the top of St. Paul's.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into her white shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her fingers, lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)