breathe easy

Idioms and Phrases

Also, breathe easily or freely . Relax, feel relieved from anxiety, stress, or tension. For example, Now that exams are over with, I can breathe easy , or Whenever I'm back in the mountains, I can breathe freely again . This idiom originally (late 1500s) was put as breathe again , implying that one had stopped breathing (or held one's breath) while feeling anxious or nervous. Shakespeare had it in King John (4:2): “Now I breathe again aloft the flood.” The variant dates from the first half of the 1800s.

Related Words

• calm
• lie down
• loosen up
• recline
• sit back
• soften
• unwind