wheeze

Etymology

From Middle English whesen, perhaps from Old Norse hvæsa (“to hiss”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱwes- (“to pant”).

verb

1. To breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.
   If the air smelled even faintly of dog, Lionel coughed, wheezed and sneezed. 2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age: A Romance (Fourth Estate, paperback edition, 443)
2. (slang) To convulse with laughter; to become breathless due to intense laughing.
   Mrs. Hearty began to shake and wheeze with laughter, and Millie stood looking at Bindle. 1932, Herbert George Jenkins, Bindle Omnibus, page 408
   He began to wheeze again, and tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks. Nate was laughing, too, infected by Check's contagious wheezing. 1973, Robert Boston, A Thorn for the Flesh, page 30
   Elsie wheezed, laughter swelling her bosom. 1988, Elizabeth Oldfield, Beware of Married Men, page 47
   The man wheezed, his laughter like an accordion whine. 1993, Richard S. Wheeler, The Two Medicine River, page 221
3. To make a sound that resembles the sound of human wheezing.
   "Even the fish know it; they don't rise to the bait any more and the birds are scared - hear how they wheeze and cry as they seek the land." 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 184
   One boy in a black tuxedo and red shoes plays a wheezing accordion like a roadside undertaker. 2009, J. P. White, Every Boat Turns South, page 112

noun

1. A piping or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration.
2. An ordinary whisper exaggerated so as to produce the hoarse sound known as the "stage whisper"; a forcible whisper with some admixture of tone.
3. (Britain, Ireland, informal) An ulterior scheme or plan.
   The main point of fuel duty, though, is as a fiscal wheeze: it made up 5% of the tax take in 2010. November 19, 2011, “Road rage; High petrol prices hurt, but will not throttle the economy”, in The Economist
   The Constitution cult in the US—deliberately stoked in the early twentieth century in a part as a bulwark against socialism—is a nastily brilliant wheeze by capitalism's apologists. 2022, China Miéville, chapter 4, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC
4. (slang) Something very humorous or laughable.
   The new comedy is a wheeze.
   You think you're going to win? That's a real wheeze!
5. A sound that resembles a human wheezing.
   At the same time I felt them fall over my brows — time to get a cut — the engine gave a final wheeze and died. 2016, Heather Hildenbrand, A Bet Worth Making