Breakdown of Спортсмен боялся выдохнуться до конца марафона.
конец
end
спортсмен
athlete
до
before, until
бояться
to be afraid
марафон
marathon
выдохнуться
to run out of steam
Questions & Answers about Спортсмен боялся выдохнуться до конца марафона.
How does the вы- and -ся pattern create the meaning of выдохнуться?
This pattern indicates doing an action to the point of absolute saturation or exhaustion. The root here is -дох-, related to breathing. While a word like выспаться means sleeping until you are fully rested, выдохнуться literally means to completely exhale oneself, which gives us the idiomatic meaning to run out of steam or to exhaust oneself.
Why is выдохнуться in the perfective aspect, while боялся is imperfective?
боялся is imperfective because the athlete's fear was an ongoing state in the past. However, the event he feared happening (running out of steam) is viewed as a single, completed change of state, so the perfective infinitive выдохнуться is used after the verb of fearing.
What other common words share the root found in выдохнуться?
The root -дох- relates to breath and breathing. You likely know it from дышать (to breathe), вдох (an inhale), and выдох (an exhale). Recognizing this root helps you see why running out of energy is literally described as running out of breath in Russian.
Why are both конца and марафона in the genitive case here?
The preposition до (until or before) requires its object to be in the genitive case, changing конец to конца. Then, to say of the marathon, we use the genitive again, changing марафон to марафона. This creates a standard chain of genitives: до конца марафона.
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