What does breathtaking mean?
Word: Breathtaking
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Breathtaking means so beautiful, exciting or surprising that it seems to stop you breathing for a moment.
Synonyms: stunning, spectacular
Antonyms: dull, ordinary
How do you spell breathtaking?
Syllables: breath - tak - ing
Tricky part: Children who know the verb for taking in air often slip an e in before the t. There is no e there: the h runs straight into the t.
Watch out for: breathetaking, breathtaiking
Memory tip: Read it in one quick rush, with no room to spare: there is no e between the h and the t.
Breathtaking in a sentence
Example 1: From the toy train in the Nilgiris, the view of the misty valley was breathtaking.
Example 2: The gymnast's final leap was so breathtaking that the whole hall went silent.
Example 3: Mum says the white desert of the Rann of Kutch under a full moon is a breathtaking sight.
Fun Fact
Climbers on Mount Everest find the views breathtaking in two ways: the air near the top holds only about a third as much oxygen in each breath as air at sea level.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Champ
Choose the correct option to make a meaningful word:
breathtak____
a) eing
b) inng
c) ign
d) ing
Show answer
d) ing. The silent e drops away before ing, and the ending keeps its usual order of i, n, g.
Spell Probe
Find the misspelt word in the sentence and choose its meaning:
Standing on the deck of the ferry, we watched a brethtaking sunset turn the sea around the island gold.
a) a piece of land with water all round it
b) the time in the evening when the sun goes down
c) extremely impressive or beautiful
d) a boat that carries people across water
Show answer
c) extremely impressive or beautiful. The misspelt word has lost the a after its first e; here it tells us the sunset was wonderful.
Sound Check
In which word is 'th' pronounced differently?
a) breathtaking
b) thousand
c) feather
d) method
Show answer
c) feather. Feather has the soft, buzzing th of this; the other three have the breathy th of thin.
Word Tally
You get 2 marks for each correctly spelt word in the list. How many marks do you get?
breathtaking, magnificant, stunning, beautifull, splendid
a) 6
b) 10
c) 8
d) 4
Show answer
a) 6. Magnificent ends in ent and beautiful has one l; the other three are right, so 3 x 2 = 6.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Which of these would most people call breathtaking?
a) a pile of plates waiting to be washed
b) a dripping tap in the kitchen
c) a queue at the ticket counter
d) a rainbow arching over a waterfall
Show answer
d) a rainbow arching over a waterfall
2. If a goal is described as breathtaking, the crowd probably ___.
a) yawned and looked away
b) booed and left early
c) gasped and then cheered
d) grumbled about the score
Show answer
c) gasped and then cheered
