[f. next.]
1. An act of wheezing; a whistling sound caused by difficult breathing.
1834. Good’s Study Med. (ed. 4), I. 477, note. A loud sibilant or dry sonorous rhoncus, corresponding with the loud sighing wheeze, audible by the naked ear.
1848. Dickens, Dombey, xx. A wheeze very like the cough of a horse.
1872. Calverley, Fly Leaves, 90. A ladylike sneeze, Or a portly papa’s more elaborate wheeze.
b. transf. A sound resembling this.
1835. Longf., Outre-Mer, Vill. Auteuil (1886), 55. The last wheeze of the clarionet died upon my ear.
1880. Swinburne, Stud. Shaks., 220. A somewhat hoarse and reedy wheeze from the scrannel-pipe of a lesser player than Pan.
c. Phonetics. A whisper (see WHISPER sb.) intensified by further contraction of the glottis.
1890. Sweet, Primer of Phonetics (1902), 12. Wheeze. If we strongly exaggerate an ordinary whisper, we get that hoarse, wheezy sound known as the ‘wheezing’ or ‘stage whisper.’
2. orig. Theatr. slang, A joke or comic gag introduced into the performance of a piece by a clown or comedian, esp. a comic phrase or saying introduced repeatedly; hence, (gen. slang or colloq.) a catch phrase constantly repeated; more widely, a trick or dodge frequently used; also, a piece of special information, a ‘tip.’
1864. P. Paterson, Glimpses Real Life, 131. The art of getting up ‘wheezes,’ as the clown’s jokes are called.
1884. G. Moore, Mummer’s Wife, xiv. Up to the present, only one ‘wheeze’ had been found.
1885. Longm. Mag., Nov., 18. He [sc. the comedian] … would, for a quarter of an hour together, improvise ‘wheezes’ to keep the house in a roar.
1890. Spectator, 17 May, 698/2. The now hackneyed wheeze, ‘A sudden thought strikes me, let us swear eternal friendship,’ is taken from ‘The Rovers.’
1903. Blackw. Mag., Oct., 534/1. He is now wisely convinced that this wheeze is played out.
1906. Daily Chron., 30 Aug., 2/6. Someone gave the defendant the wheeze.
1910. Dundee Adv., 2 July, 6. The old wheeze about one touch of nature making the whole world kin.
