Dictionary

breathe new life into en · VERB

Meanings

1. To reinvigorate; to fill with energy again.
   • While his two predecessors had been authoritarians – they knew what they thought on the most contentious matters within Catholicism and imposed that view on the church regardless of dissenters – Francis preferred to work away patiently at building consensus and accommodating a variety of perspectives. To that end, he breathed new life into the system of regular gatherings – or synods – of bishops in Rome to debate pressing matters. 2025 April 21, Peter Stanford, “Pope Francis obituary”, in The Guardian:
   • Supporters were streaming for the exits in their droves but Bruno Fernandes breathed new life into United when he converted a penalty six minutes from time after a video assistant referee intervention for a foul on Casemiro that had initially gone unpunished. 2025 April 17, Simon Stone, “Manchester United 5-4 Olympique Lyonnais”, in BBC Sport:
   • In the ensuing clashes between nouveau-cons and their more or less double-crossed doppelgangers, taking the part of either is to administer the kiss of life to a dying tradition or breathing new life into cacoethics. 2014 March 3, M. F. Dail, Limbodeswills Wain, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Trafford Publishing, →ISBN:
   • But, overall, Donne's poetry represents an epistemic break with the love clichés so overused by an earlier era; and the poet was often moved to use Platonic equatings of love, beauty, and goodness to breathe new life into old Petrarchisms. 2015, Philip R. Hardie, The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature:

Forms