with bated breath

alternative common misspelling with 'bated breath · alternative common misspelling with baited breath

1. With reduced breath.

   Speak gently, Ο my son, speak gently now / With 'bated breath^([sic]), speak low.

   1878, Edward Hayes Plumptre, transl., Philoctetes, lines 845–846

   3 more examples

   Shall I bend low, and in a bond-mans key / With bated breath, and whiſpring humbleneſſe, / Say this:

   c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], page 166, column 2

   […] with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale.

   1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXIII, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 187

   The Professor, the master, the supreme chief, he who had to be addressed with bated breath sat with half-opened mouth and staring eyes, leaning forward in his chair, while in front of him the slight young woman shaking her mop of brown hair and wagging an admonitory forefinger, spoke to him as a father speaks to a refractory child.

   1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “In which Challenger Meets a Strange Colleague”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019

2. idiomaticEagerly; with great anticipation.

   We are waiting with bated breath for the release of the new version.

   2 more examples

   Thanks to the previous experience of the chief performers, to careful preparation and rehearsal, and to perfect weather conditions, they watched in breath-bated silence the spectacle of the huge bulk moving without a hitch into position over the temporary pier caps on which it settled as water ballast was admitted to the pontoons.

   1959 May 28, L. T. C. Rolt, “Centenary of the Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash”, in Railway Magazine, page 310

   Hale held enormous influence over Oklahoma's fragile legal institutions. As a reporter who visited the region noted, “Townspeople, from low to high, speak of him with bated breath. His influence and that of his associates is felt everywhere.”

   2021 (originally published 2017, adapted 2021), David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: Adapted for Younger Readers, page 174