to give off or exhale (water or vapour) through the skin, a mucous membrane, etc
4.
(of plants) to lose (water in the form of water vapour), esp through the stomata of the leaves
▶ USAGE It is often maintained that transpire should not be used to mean happen or occur, as in the event transpired late in the evening, and that the word is properly used to mean become known, as in it transpired later that the thief had been caught. The word is, however, widely used in the former sense, esp in spoken English
Derived forms
transpirable (tranˈspirable)
adjective
transpiration (ˌtrænspəˈreɪʃən)
noun
transpiratory (tranˈspiratory) or rare transpirational (ˌtranspiˈrational)
adjective
Word origin
C16: from Medieval Latin transpīrāre, from Latin trans- + spīrāre to breathe
Examples of 'transpirational' in a sentence
transpirational
As a result, transpirational water use decreased significantly with endophyte inoculation while biomass did not change or slightly increased.
Hyungmin Rho, Victor Van Epps, Nicholas Wegley, Sharon L. Doty, Soo-Hyung Kim 2018, 'Salicaceae Endophytes Modulate Stomatal Behavior and Increase Water Use Efficiencyin Rice', Frontiers in Plant Sciencehttp://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpls.2018.00188/full. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)