Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Sneezing |
SneezingNoun1. A symptom consisting of the involuntary expulsion of air from the nose. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "sneezing" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1350. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Health | Sudden, forceful, involuntary expulsion of air from the nose and mouth caused by irritation to the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract. (references) |
Literature | Sneezing Some Catholics attribute to St. Gregory the use of the benediction "God bless you," after sneezing, and say that he enjoined its use during a pestilence in which sneezing was a mortal symptom, and was therefore called the death-sneeze. Aristotle mentions a similar custom among the Greeks; and Thucydides tells us that sneezing was a crisis symptom of the great Athenian plague. The Romans followed the same custom, and their usual exclamation was "Absit omen!" We also find it prevalent in the New World among the native Indian tribes, in Sennaar, Monomatapa, etc. etc. It is almost incredible how ancient and how widely diffused is the notion that sneezing is an omen which requires to be averted. The notion prevailed not only in ancient Greece and Rome, but is existent in Persia, India, and even Africa. The rabbins tell us that Jacob in his flight gave a sneeze, the evil effects of which were averted by prayer. In the conquest of Florida, when the Spaniards arrived, the Cazique, we are told, sneezed, and all the court lifted up their hands and implored the sun to avert the evil omen. In the rebellion of Monomatapa, in Africa, the king sneezed, and a signal of the fact being given, all the faithful subjects instantly made vows and offerings for his safety. The same is said respecting Sennaar, in Nubia, in Sweden, etc. The Sadder (one of the sacred books of the Parsees) enjoins that all people should have recourse to prayer if a person sneezes, because sneezing is a proof that the "Evil Spirit is abroad." Foote, in his farce of Dr. Last in His Chariot, makes one of the consulting doctors ask why when a person sneezes, all the company bows? and the answer given was that "sneezing is a mortal symptom which once depopulated Athens." "In Sweden, ... you sneeze, and they cry God bless you."- Longfellow. Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Synonyms: SneezingSynonyms: sneeze (n), sternutation (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Wind | Sneezing .Verb:: errhine; sternutative, sternutatory; sternutation; hiccup, hiccough; catching of the breath. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Sneezing |
| English words defined with "sneezing": Achillea ptarmica ♦ head cold ♦ Neesing, Neishout ♦ sneezeweed, sneezeweed yarrow, sneezewort, sternutative, sternutator, sternutatory, stress incontinence. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "sneezing": avian infectious coryza ♦ fowl coryza ♦ Haemophilus paragallinarum infection ♦ infectious coryza, infectious coryza of chickens, infectious coryza of fowl ♦ NOSE ♦ stress urinary, stress urinary incontinence. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Well look at you. Toxic as a crow, sneezing like a maniac, cigarette ash all down your front, nervous, out of breath, you've got married man written across your forehead in big neon letters! (Man in the Moon; writing credit: Basil Dearden; John Foley) If sneezing three times means someone doesn't like me, I think I'll survive. (Rurouni Kenshin; writing credit: Johan Unenge; Måns Gahrton) | |
Lyrics | With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the (Blinded By The Light (Bruce Springsteen); performing artist: MANFRED MANN) | |
Movie/TV Titles | The Sneezing Weasel (1938) Sneezing (1909) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | This bacterium can attack any part of the body, though usually the lungs, causing Tuberculosis, and is spread through inhalation of infected sputum from a coughing or sneezing individual. Credit: CDC. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Play | Caption | Play | Caption |
 | Baby sneezing. | | Sneeze; a man sneezing. |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | After at least six months to a year, the sneezing, itching and hives may begin to subside. (references) | |
Benign exertional headache is brought on by running, lifting, coughing, sneezing, or bending. (references) | ||
It is such chemical mediators that cause the symptoms of allergy, including wheezing, sneezing, runny eyes and itching. (references) | ||
Travel | Turkey | Neither do the accepted practices of frequent soapy handwashing or covering of the mouth when coughing or sneezing and then washing hands. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Sneezing" is generally used as a lexical verb (-ing form) -- approximately 77.08% of the time. "Sneezing" is used about 48 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Lexical Verb (-ing form) | 77.08% | 37 | 56,631 |
| Noun (singular) | 10.42% | 5 | 157,705 |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 8.33% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Noun (proper) | 4.17% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 48 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "sneezing": sneezing powder. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "sneezing"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | teshtimë (sneeze, sternutation). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | æ‰"å–·åš (Sneezed). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | sternutatio (sternutation), nysen (sternutation), nys. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | sternutatio, niezen (sneeze). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | aivastaminen. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
French | éternuement (sneeze). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
German | niesend. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | עטשת, זריר×", ×"תעטשות (sneeze). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | tüsszentés (sneeze, sternutation). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | starnuto (sneeze). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Korean | 재채기함. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | streiyraght, streighraght, streighernee. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | eezingsnay strãnut (sneeze). (various references) estornudo (sneeze). (various references) nysning (sneeze). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | sternutatio. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Sneezing" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Senesino. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "sneezing" (pronounced snē"zing) |
| 4 | -ē" z i ng | appeasing, easing, freezing, pleasing, seizing, squeezing, teasing, wheezing. |
| 3 | -z i ng | abusing, accusing, advertising, advising, aggrandizing, agonizing, amazing, amortizing, amusing, analyzing, antagonizing, apologizing, appetizing, appraising, arising, arousing, authorizing, blazing, boozing, bowsing, browsing, bruising, brutalizing, bulldozing, buzzing, cannibalizing, capitalizing, carousing, categorizing, causing, centralizing, characterizing, chastising, choosing, cleansing, closing, colorizing, commercializing, composing, comprising, compromising, computerizing, confusing, criminalizing, criticizing, cruising, crystallizing, customizing, decentralizing, decomposing, decriminalizing, deemphasizing, defusing, dehumanizing, demilitarizing, democratizing, demonizing, demoralizing, denationalizing, desensitizing, destabilizing, devising, diffusing, digitizing, disclosing, disguising, disposing, downsizing, dozing, dramatizing, economizing, editorializing, emphasizing, enclosing, energizing, enterprising, equalizing, espousing, excusing, exercising, exposing, fantasizing, federalizing, fertilizing, finalizing, foreclosing, formalizing, franchising, fraternizing, fusing, galvanizing, gazing, generalizing, glamorizing, glazing, grazing, harmonizing, hazing, hosing, housing, humanizing, hydrolyzing, idolizing, immobilizing, immortalizing, immunizing, imposing, improvising, industrializing, infusing, institutionalizing, ionizing, ironizing, itemizing, jeopardizing, legalizing, legitimizing, liberalizing, losing, marginalizing, materializing, maximizing, memorizing, merchandising, mesmerizing, minimizing, misusing, mobilizing, modernizing, monopolizing, moralizing, musing, nationalizing, neutralizing, normalizing, nosing, oozing, opposing, organizing, overgrazing, overusing, oxidizing, paralyzing, paraphrasing, patronizing, pausing, penalizing, personalizing, perusing, phasing, phrasing, polarizing, politicizing, popularizing, posing, praising, predisposing, prioritizing, privatizing, proposing, proselytizing, publicizing, quizzing, raising, rationalizing, razing, realizing, reauthorizing, recapitalizing, recognizing, recusing, refusing, reimposing, reorganizing, reusing, revising, revitalizing, revolutionizing, rising, romanticizing, Rosing, sanitizing, satirizing, schmoozing, scrutinizing, securitizing, sensationalizing, sizing, snoozing, socializing, specializing, stabilizing, standardizing, sterilizing, stigmatizing, strategizing, subsidizing, summarizing, supervising, supposing, surprising, symbolizing, sympathizing, synthesizing, tantalizing, televising, temporizing, terrorizing, theorizing, tranquilizing, trivializing, unappetizing, uncompromising, unionizing, unsurprising, uprising, using, utilizing, vandalizing, verbalizing, victimizing, visualizing, warehousing, whizzing, womanizing. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "e-e-g-i-n-n-s-z" | |
-1 letter: engines. | |
-2 letters: engine, ensign, genies, seeing, signee. | |
-3 letters: genes, genie, nenes, nines, segni, seine, seize, sengi, siege, singe, zeins, zings. | |
-4 letters: egis, engs, gees, geez, gene, gens, gien, gies, gins, inns, nene, nine, seen, sene, sign, sine, sing, size, zees, zein, zigs, zing, zins. | |
-5 letters: eng, ens, gee, gen, gie, gin, inn, ins, nee, see. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-e-g-i-n-n-s-z" | |
+3 letters: indigenizes. | |
+4 letters: newsmagazine, slenderizing, westernizing. | |
+5 letters: anesthetizing, desensitizing, energizations, newsmagazines, recognizances, rendezvousing, resensitizing, skeletonizing. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)53 6E 65 65 7A 69 6E 67 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)... -. . . --.. .. -. --. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010011 01101110 01100101 01100101 01111010 01101001 01101110 01100111 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)S n e e z i n g |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0053 006E 0065 0065 007A 0069 006E 0067 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)5380717192758073 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Sounds | 9. Quotations: Non-fiction 10. Usage Frequency 11. Expressions 12. Expressions: Internet | 13. Translations: Modern 14. Translations: Ancient 15. Derivations 16. Rhymes | 17. Anagrams 18. Orthography 19. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
