Etymology From Middle English whesen, perhaps from Old Norse hvæsa (“to hiss”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱwes- (“to pant”).
1
To breathe hard, and with an audible piping or whistling sound, as persons affected with asthma.
If the air smelled even faintly of dog, Lionel coughed, wheezed and sneezed.2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age: A Romance (Fourth Estate, paperback edition, 443)
2
Slang To convulse with laughter; to become breathless due to intense laughing.
Mrs. Hearty began to shake and wheeze with laughter, and Millie stood looking at Bindle.1932, Herbert George Jenkins, Bindle Omnibus, page 408:
He began to wheeze again, and tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks. Nate was laughing, too, infected by Check's contagious wheezing.1973, Robert Boston, A Thorn for the Flesh, page 30:
2 more examples
Elsie wheezed, laughter swelling her bosom.1988, Elizabeth Oldfield, Beware of Married Men, page 47:
The man wheezed, his laughter like an accordion whine.1993, Richard S. Wheeler, The Two Medicine River, page 221:
3
To make a sound that resembles the sound of human wheezing.
"Even the fish know it; they don't rise to the bait any more and the birds are scared - hear how they wheeze and cry as they seek the land."1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 184:
One boy in a black tuxedo and red shoes plays a wheezing accordion like a roadside undertaker.2009, J. P. White, Every Boat Turns South, page 112:
wheeze
noun
Etymology From Middle English whesen, perhaps from Old Norse hvæsa (“to hiss”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱwes- (“to pant”).
1
A piping or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration.
2
An ordinary whisper exaggerated so as to produce the hoarse sound known as the "stage whisper"; a forcible whisper with some admixture of tone.
Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze.1922 February, James Joyce, “[V]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:
The main point of fuel duty, though, is as a fiscal wheeze: it made up 5% of the tax take in 2010.2011 November 19, “Road rage; High petrol prices hurt, but will not throttle the economy”, in The Economist:
1 more example
The Constitution cult in the US—deliberately stoked in the early twentieth century in a part as a bulwark against socialism—is a nastily brilliant wheeze by capitalism's apologists.2022, China Miéville, chapter 4, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC:
You think you're going to win? That's a real wheeze!
5
A sound that resembles a human wheezing.
At the same time I felt them fall over my brows — time to get a cut — the engine gave a final wheeze and died.2016, Heather Hildenbrand, A Bet Worth Making: