with bated breath

• with 'bated breath, with baited breath (common misspelling)

From the verb bate, alteration by aphesis of the verb abate (“to reduce; lessen”). Coined by William Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice, see quotations.

• (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA^(key): /wɪð ˈbeɪtɪd ˈbɹɛθ/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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with bated breath

1. With reduced breath.
   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], page 166, column 2:

     Shall I bend low, and in a bond-mans key / With bated breath, and whiſpring humbleneſſe, / Say this:

   • 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXIII, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 187:

     […] with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale.

   • 1878, Edward Hayes Plumptre, transl., Philoctetes‎^[1], lines 845–846:

     Speak gently, Ο my son, speak gently now / With 'bated breath^[sic], speak low.

   • 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “In which Challenger Meets a Strange Colleague”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:

     The Professor, the master, the supreme chief, he who had to be addressed with bated breath sat with half-opened mouth and staring eyes, leaning forward in his chair, while in front of him the slight young woman shaking her mop of brown hair and wagging an admonitory forefinger, spoke to him as a father speaks to a refractory child.

2. (idiomatic) Eagerly; with great anticipation.

   We are waiting with bated breath for the release of the new version.

   • 1959 May, L. T. C. Rolt, “Centenary of the Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash”, in Railway Magazine, page 310:

     Thanks to the previous experience of the chief performers, to careful preparation and rehearsal, and to perfect weather conditions, they watched in breath-bated silence the spectacle of the huge bulk moving without a hitch into position over the temporary pier caps on which it settled as water ballast was admitted to the pontoons.

• breathholding
• don't hold your breath
• hold one's breath

• Michael Quinion (1996–2026), “With bated breath”, in World Wide Words.
• Michael Quinion (2004), “With bated breath”, in Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, →ISBN.