Breathalyzes

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Measures the amount of alcohol in someone's blood by having them exhale into a portable electronic device
2. Checks how much alcohol a person has consumed by analyzing a sample of their breath with a special instrument
3. Determines a driver's blood alcohol content through a breath sample taken with a handheld testing unit

Etymology: "Breathalyzes" is the third-person singular present form of "breathalyze," meaning to test a person's breath for alcohol. The verb is a back-formation from "breathalyzer," the name of the device itself. Speakers took the noun, which described a machine, and treated its ending as if it were a verb suffix, then produced a verb by stripping that ending away. The noun "breathalyzer" was built from "breath" and the "-alyzer" element, a form of "analyzer" that appears in names for instruments that analyse a substance. Once people had a verb meaning to put someone through a breath test, "breathalyzes" simply follows the regular pattern of English verbs ending in -s for the third-person singular.

Synonyms: test, analyze