Perspire

Perspire

When someone is perspiring, that person is sweating. This word is obviously formed by the prefix “per-“ and the word “spire”. In this case, “per” means “throughout”, and spire is a Middle English word meaning “to breathe” (no longer in use). It is easy to imagine that perspire means “to give out watery fluid through the pores of the skin” or simply “to sweat”. This expression sometimes sounds more polite than “sweat”.

As you may know, there is another fairly common word containing “spire”, respire. This means “to take air into the lungs and expel it again”, and it kind of makes sense why the prefix “re-“ was given. The word “respire” itself is not as commonly used as “respiration” or “respiratory”.

I thought the word “precipitation” might have something to do with these words, because it sounds a bit similar and is related to water, but it seems to have a different origin.