wheeze

About 0.24 uses per million words.

Meaning

1. verb To breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.
2. verb To convulse with laughter; to become breathless due to intense laughing.
3. verb To make a sound that resembles the sound of human wheezing.
4. noun A piping or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration.
5. noun An ordinary whisper exaggerated so as to produce the hoarse sound known as the "stage whisper"; a forcible whisper with some admixture of tone.
6. noun An ulterior scheme or plan.
7. noun Something very humorous or laughable.

   The new comedy is a wheeze.

8. noun A sound that resembles a human wheezing.

Similar words

gag laugh jape jest joke yak whee whuff whiff wheeple

Often followed by

and of in or is that as with to

Word family

wheezed wheezes wheezing