The following article by Chris Tribble discusses the uses of the words eating, drinking, sleeping and breathing in the (Manchester) Guardian Weekly.
Don't hold your breath
There are some things everyone on the planet does; stop doing them and you stop living. Four that seem to be biologically unavoidable are eating, drinking, sleeping and breathing. So how does the Guardian Weekly deal with these words? To get a broader view of what's going on I looked at lists that went from drank to drunks, ate to eatery. I found that a lot of reporting had little to do with survival.
First, drinking words come at the top of the list (4,200 instances), followed by sleeping (2,477), eating (2,223), and breathing (1,755) - so it seems that the thing we do most is the least newsworthy.
The high frequency of drinking words is associated with more than just quenching thirst - drunk, drunkard, drunkards, drunkenly, drunkenness, drunks account for 874. Drink most strongly associates with driving, wine, alcohol, drugs, while drinking associates with water, tea, alcohol, habits and womanising.
Sleep and associated words tell a similar kind of dysfunctional story. Top of the list of words associated with sleep comes deprivation, while sleeping is found with sickness, beauty (an exception?), rough, bag and pills.
Eating is also found with problems such as habits and disorders (as well as humble pie). Eat, by contrast, is found with more normal drink, meat, food and cake.
Breathing seems to be a bit different. Although breathing is found with difficulties, sigh and problem, breath strongly associates with fresh and air, breathe with life, sigh and air, and breathed with sigh, relief and life.
This more positive story is confirmed when reviewing four-word phrases that occur in this newspaper. While eating, drinking and sleeping only figure in such idioms as having your cake and eating it, breathing seems to be closer to the heart of the language. In the same breath, we hear that a new political player is a breath of fresh air who will breathe new life into tired institutions. We advise them to take a deep breath before they start, while we remember the advice don't hold your breath.
