Breathalysing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Measuring the alcohol content in a person's exhaled breath to estimate how much they have drunk, usually with a police device
2. Checking a driver's blood alcohol level by having them blow into an electronic analyser that gives a reading
3. Using a portable breath testing device to determine whether a person has consumed too much alcohol to drive safely

Etymology: The word "breathalysing" is simply the continuous form of "breathalyse", so its history is that of the verb. "Breathalyse" is a back-formation from "breathalyser", the name of the device used to measure alcohol in a driver's breath. In other words, the machine's name came first, and the verb was later squeezed out of it by stripping off the ending that looked like an agent suffix. The noun "breathalyser" is built from "breath" and "-lyser", the latter a modern coinage based on the Greek "lysis", meaning "loosening" or "dissolving", which in chemistry came to denote the breaking down of a substance. The device works by reacting the alcohol in exhaled air with chemicals, so the name describes a machine that analyses breath.

Synonyms: breathalyzing, testing