While working on a page for another blog, I found myself using the expression "bated breath." This one always bugs me because I know I'm spelling it right, but I always have to look it up because I just don't trust that darn word "bated." Where did it come from? Can I bate someone or something? If not, could I have a hundred years ago? Was it short for something? I can only think of a few words that end in "bate," and very few seemed logical or even appropriate.
Checking online for the proper spelling, I discovered a succinct article that laid my anxieties to rest:
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 means “reduced, lessened, lowered in force”. So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing as a result of some strong emotion, such as terror or awe.
Aha! One of those outdated words that only lives in the form of an idiom that just won't die. Well, it might. Or at least it might undergo a change once enough people spell it incorrectly to the point of everyday acceptance. Is that necessarily a good thing?
In any case, here's the full article by World Wide Words.
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