Dry-heave

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
An attempt to vomit that ejects only gas.
"She spent three days in the college infirmary trying to contain her overwhelming feelings of nausea and despair. Every morning for months, she would awake with the dry heaves."

Verb

1
To attempt to vomit with the ejection of only gas.
"I followed as he hobbled toward the bathroom, and my father barely made it to the toilet before he started dry-heaving, knees spread on the tile."

Synonyms

Example

"I followed as he hobbled toward the bathroom, and my father barely made it to the toilet before he started dry-heaving, knees spread on the tile."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.