August 6, 1997

bated breath

Today, while perusing a reader-feedback forum on the Internet I encountered the phrase "with baited breath." The writer probably intended to use the expression "with bated breath." I am curious about the origin of this phrase and the frequency of the above variant.

The often misunderstood and misspelled expression bated breath is actually very straightforward.

The word bate means 'to moderate; restrain' or 'to lessen; diminish'. It is an aphetic shortening of abate--aphesis is the loss of an unstressed initial syllable, as in lone, from alone, or cute, from acute. So with bated breath means 'with the breath restrained or made gentle, as from excitement', and hence 'in a state of suspense'. Remember "to abate one's breath" and it'll make more sense.

The word bate itself, first found around 1300, was once rather common--it appears a number of times in Shakespeare, for example--but is now very rare except in this one set expression. As a result, many people don't know what bated means, and change it to baited by the process of folk etymology--the unclear bate is altered to associate it with the common bait.

The version baited breath is not very rare, and the process that gives rise to it is common and has many parallels, but it's almost always regarded as an error. You should avoid it, lest people wonder what you've baited your breath with, and what you're trying to catch.