air-breathing

1. 1.

   deriving oxygen from the air

   “he studied respiration in marine air-breathing vertebrates”

   “large air-breathing ichthyosaurs had hydrofoils”

Questions about air-breathing

What does air-breathing mean?

air-breathing means "deriving oxygen from the air".

How many syllables are in air-breathing?

air-breathing has 4 syllables and divides as a-ir--brea-thing under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

Is air-breathing a common word?

air-breathing is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.