“Baited Breath” or “Bated Breath”?
I see this phrase used incorrectly all the time. It’s “bated”, people. As in “abate” for shorten or lessen. Those who use it in spoken communication don’t have to worry about it, but I see it written quite frequently, especially when the writer is trying to look cute. All they really accomplish is looking like an idiot. A simple web search would show you the answer:
It’s easy to mock, but there’s a real problem here. Bated and baited sound the same and we no longer use bated (let alone the verb to bate), outside this one set phrase, which has become an idiom. Confusion is almost inevitable. Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the unstressed first vowel (a process called aphesis); it has the meaning “reduced, lessened, lowered in force”. So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing through terror, awe, extreme anticipation, or anxiety.
Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice: “Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, / Say this …”. Nearly three centuries later, Mark Twain employed it in Tom Sawyer: “Every eye fixed itself upon him; 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”.
For those who know the older spelling or who stop to consider the matter, baited breath evokes an incongruous image, which Geoffrey Taylor humorously (and consciously) captured in verse in his poem Cruel Clever Cat:
Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
So get it right, especially when dealing with a potential client via email!
(And yes, I know that my punctuation-relative-to-quotation-marks is “incorrect” by American standards. The story of why we do punctuation relative to quotation marks differently from the rest of the world is an interesting story which I reserve for a post of its own. Suffice to say, I place my punctuation where it makes sense logically rather than according to misguided convention.)
September 21st, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I’m still doing it the way Associated Press tells me too. So there.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Yes, I refer to punctuation-outside-of-quotes as “geek punctuation”.
October 7th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Good post. I agree — seeing ‘baited’ for ‘bated’ sets my teeth on edge. But what I hate even worse is when I read about someone or some group given “free reign” to do something. It’s “FREE REIN”, people! As in dropping the hose’s reins and letting him go wherever he wants.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:10 am
[...] Susie wrote an engrossing place today onHere’s a hurried excerptIt’s “bated”, people. As in “abate” for shorten or lessen. Those who ingest it in uttered act don’t hit to vexation most it, but I wager it cursive quite frequently, especially when the illustrator is disagreeable to be cute. … [...]