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not breathe a word
Idioms and Phrases
Not reveal a secret, keep concealed, as in You must promise not to breathe a word of what I'm about to tell you . This phrase relies on the verb breathe as meaning “to utter,” a usage dating from the late 1500s.Example Sentences
Though only 9 at the time, May Pundak knew that when her father was often away in the early 1990s, he was involved in some kind of mission for Israel, one so secret that she could not breathe a word about it to friends at school.
Limit visits to holidays and weekends, bounce the grandkids on his knee, not breathe a word about business or affairs of state.
Manchester says it has been five days of fun following a long period of secrecy, since the show was taped May 1 and she could not breathe a word of the outcome.
Molly begs Sam to leave that out of the report and not breathe a word of it to anyone, at least until she figures out what happened while she was supposedly alone in space.
Maria LaCalle, who came to a Round Table lecture on Google wearing a jeweled nose stud and the kind of toned biceps that come from hoisting 40-pound boxes all day, still will not breathe a word about the archive she managed years ago for Rolling Stone magazine on the rock ’n’ roll era.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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