Verb

(en verb)

To make plain, manifest, or intelligible; to clear of obscurity; to illustrate the meaning of.

*

The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with unexpected humour and high spirits. He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. Nobody would miss them, he explained .

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03

, author=, volume=100, issue=2, page=106 , magazine=(American Scientist) , title= Pixels or Perish , passage=Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.}}

To give a valid excuse for some past behavior.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=David Simpson

, volume=188, issue=26, page=36, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Fantasy of navigation , passage=It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: perhaps out of a desire to escape the gravity of this world or to get a preview of the next; […].}}

(obsolete) To make flat, smooth out.

(obsolete) To unfold or make visible.

* (John Evelyn) (1620-1706)

The horse-chestnut isready to explain its leaf.

Verb

(en verb)

To inhale a larger quantity of air than usual, and immediately expel it; to make a deep single audible respiration, especially as the result or involuntary expression of fatigue, exhaustion, grief, sorrow, frustration, or the like.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=5 citation , passage=A waiter brought his aperitif, which was a small scotch and soda, and as he sipped it gratefully he sighed .
   ‘Civilized,’ he said to Mr. Campion. ‘Humanizing.’ […] ‘Cigars and summer days and women in big hats with swansdown face-powder, that's what it reminds me of.’}}

To lament; to grieve.

* Bible, Mark viii. 12

He sighed deeply in his spirit.

To utter sighs over; to lament or mourn over.

To experience an emotion associated with sighing.

To make a sound like sighing.

* Coleridge

And the coming wind did roar more loud, / And the sails did sigh like sedge.

* Tennyson

The winter winds are wearily sighing .

To exhale (the breath) in sighs.

* Shakespeare

Never man sighed truer breath.

To express by sighs; to utter in or with sighs.

* Shakespeare

They sighed forth proverbs.

* Hoole

The gentle swain sighs back her grief.

(archaic) To utter sighs over; to lament or mourn over.

* Prior

Ages to come, and men unborn, / Shall bless her name, and sigh her fate.