Breathalyze

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Measure the alcohol content of a person's breath with a device to check whether they have been drinking before driving
2. Use a portable device that analyzes exhaled air to estimate how much alcohol someone has consumed
3. Test a driver's breath for alcohol using an instrument that reads blood alcohol concentration from a sample

Etymology: "Breathalyze" is a back-formation: it was made by stripping the ending off an existing noun, "breathalyzer," and treating what remained as a verb. The noun came first, as the name of the device itself, a machine that measures the alcohol in a person's breath. Speakers then needed a verb for the act of using it, and "breathalyze" filled that gap. The pattern is the same one that produced verbs like "edit" from "editor." The word's shape shows its parts clearly. "Breath" is the ordinary English word, and the "-lyzer" ending comes from the same Greek-derived root found in "analyze," which means to break something down into its components. A breathalyzer, then, analyzes your breath. Once that noun was in common use, dropping "-er" from the end gave a verb that means exactly what the machine does.

Synonyms: breathalyse