sneeze
n. countablen. a sudden, noisy burst of air that comes out of your nose and mouth. You usually do this when you have a cold or if dust tickles your nose.
n. a sudden, involuntary, and forceful expulsion of air from the lungs through the nose and mouth, typically caused by irritation of the nasal mucosa.
The loud sneeze startled everyone in the quiet library.
She felt a sneeze coming on and quickly reached for a tissue to cover her face.
The sudden sneeze was so powerful that it momentarily interrupted his speech, forcing him to pause and compose himself before continuing.
From Middle English snesen (“to sneeze”), alteration of earlier fnesen (“to sneeze”), from Old English fnēosan (“to sneeze, snort”), from Proto-West Germanic fneusan, from Proto-Germanic fneusaną, from Proto-Indo-European *pnew- (“to breathe, pant, snort, sneeze”). Cognate with dialectal Dutch fniezen (“to sneeze”), Old Norse fnýsa (“to snort”). Compare neeze, from Middle English nesen, from Old English *hnēosan (“to sneeze”), cognate with Old High German niosan (“to sneeze”), Old Norse hnjósa (“to sneeze”). See neeze. It has been suggested that the change could be due to a misinterpretation of the uncommon initial sequence fn- as ſn- (sn- written with a long s), although the change is regular, seen also in snore and snort from Middle English fnoren and fnorten, and in late Middle English snatted from earlier Middle English fnatted (“snub-nosed”). The fn- forms of all these words fell out of use in the 1400s. Due to this rather universal adoption of the fn- > sn- shift in within English by such a time frame, the idea of of it being a simple sound shift has been suggested as well, with the specifically being a type of assimilation as the bilabial f- becomes alveolar s- to match the place of articulation of the following n-.
Often used with the verb 'to let out' or 'to stifle'.