![]() The prefix ex, Latin for “out of”, displaces the s of spire, leaving expire.Įxpire, to breathe out, is first recorded as such in 1590 in Spenser’s Faerie Queene : “To saue his bodie from the scorching fire, Which he from hellish entrailes did expire”, a description of St George’s encounter with the dragon (Figure 1). ![]() This meaning of “spire” is now obsolete, but adding prefixes produces many derivatives: aspire, conspire, inspire, interspire, perspire, respire, sospire, suspire, transpire. ![]() The English verb to spire, to breathe, is first recorded in Wycliffe’s 14 th century translation of a verse in Ecclesiastes, Chapter 43: “In his wil shal spiren, or brethen, out the south” (“At His will the south wind blows”). It gives us words such as spirit, spiritual, and sprightly, and the French loan phrase esprit de corps.
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