wheeze

verb

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.”

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.”

   “He began to wheeze again, and tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks. Nate was laughing, too, infected by Check's contagious wheezing.”

   “Elsie wheezed, laughter swelling her bosom.”

   “The man wheezed, his laughter like an accordion whine.”

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."”

   “One boy in a black tuxedo and red shoes plays a wheezing accordion like a roadside undertaker.”

noun

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.
3. (British, Ireland, informal)An ulterior scheme or plan.

   “Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze.”

   “The main point of fuel duty, though, is as a fiscal wheeze: it made up 5% of the tax take in 2010.”

   “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.”

4. (slang)Something very humorous or laughable.

   “The new comedy is a wheeze.”

   “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.”