I heard him expire without

Two strange usages from Gale Warning, a 1939 novel by Dornford Yates.

First - what does "without" mean? To me, it means "not having" or "not being with". I'm familiar with the other usage, but I'd never say or write it.

What other usage? The "without" that's the opposite, not of "with", but of "within". (I understand, by the way, that many varieties of English have the preposition 'outwith' for this.)

The people in this book constantly use the phrase "without the law" (in fact, that's the title of the first chapter) - and they mean "outside the law". "We are without the law" means "we are outlaws".

Looking up "without" in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged I find five meanings!

1 a : at, to, or on the outside of : exterior to <had to stand without the door -- F.L.Packard> <had placed themselves without the church -- Valentine Ughet & Eleanor Davis> <solidarity and goodwill within and without the clan -- W.W.Howells> b : out of the range of <today, it is a goal, not without our immediate grasp, but attainable -- S.J.Holbel> c : BEYOND, PAST <just without the trees -- William Bartram>
2 : not derived from or connected with : external to <light in me, light without me, everywhere change -- Robert Browning>
3 a : not using or being subjected to <spent the evening without conversation> <worked without coercion> b : exempt or free from <without end> <without fail> <without fear>
4 a : not accompanied by or associated with : separated from <smoke without fire> <taste without extravagance> <music without tears> b : suffering the deprivation or absence of : not having : LACKING <without money or resources> <without a roof over his head> c : lacking the company or companionship of <could not live without her>
5 a : not securing or receiving <was fired without explanation> <was welcomed back without reproaches> b : not admitting of <a condition without remedy> c -- used as a function word to indicate the absence or neglect of an action <people who look without seeing, listen without hearing, read without understanding, and act without thinking -- Phoenix Flame>

Now, some of those distinctions are very fine. 1 & 2 seem very close to me, and 3, 4 & 5 seem distinguished more by our attitudes to the objects than any actual difference in meaning of the preposition. Broadly speaking, then, there seem to be those two main meanings: external and lacking.


Context makes it clear, I suppose, or at least usually does - "they stood without the church" probably doesn't mean that at other times they might indeed have a church with them - but Browning's "light in me, light without me" certainly doesn't, to me, suggest "light in me, light outside me" but rather "light in me, light whether I'm there or not", and even in fuller context

When, what, first thing at daybreak, pierced the sleep
With a summons to me? Up I sprang alive,
Light in me, light without me, everywhere
Change! A broad yellow sunbeam was let fall
From heaven to earth

it's ambiguous whether the narrator is describing light merely external or light that doesn't require him. And "solidarity and goodwill within and without the clan" may guide you to the reading of "inside and out", but would "goodwill without the clan" on its own sound like "goodwill to strangers"?

I'd use "outside" in all these cases.

And then there's "expire"... In the novel, the hero has hidden himself in the back seat of the villain's car and overhears the main villain talking to the driver.

"Don't argue with me. You're going straight back to London and you're going to put Bogy on. He's got to run down Bagot at any price. I don't care where he is. He's got to be found." I heard him expire. "These blasted Willies. You never know where you are."

He expired? Then how did he go on talking?

Sure, "expire" can mean "breathe out", just like "inspire" can mean "breathe in". But are those even remotely meanings that occur to you? "Breathed his last", perhaps, for "he expired", but "he inspired" wouldn't mean "he breathed" at all.

Latin had two verbs for breathing: spirare and halare. We didn't borrow the unprefixed forms; dum spiro spero may be familiar (or not - it's "while I breathe I hope"), but "spire" in English always comes from the Old English spir which meant a blade of grass,a shoot, a stalk, not "breathing" in any form, and as a verb it means "to send forth or develop shoots; to shoot up into a spire; to mount or soar aloft; to rise, fall, or otherwise move in or as if in a spiral. "Hale" of course means "whole". So only the prefixed forms were borrowed from Latin.

We took "exhale" and "inhale", and nothing else, and those are basic words for "breathing out and breathing in". But with the "spir-" set we not only borrowed ex- and in-, but a half a dozen more. Of the eight, only two have meanings basically confined to breathing, and they're not ex- and in-. The other four don't mean "breathing" at all. And "inspire" and "expire"'s figurative meanings are far more common than the breath-related ones. "Expire" almost always means "die" instead of "breathe out". (In fact, my first thought was that the much put-upon driver had killed the villain.) And "I heard him inspire" for "I heard him take a breath" would be even weirder.

If you've just got to be Latinate, say "I heard him exhale".

ps- Here are the spire verbs (remember that Latin prefixes alter morphologically, so ad and sub have changed before the SP of the root):

inspire (breathe in) - to influence, to guide, to communicate, to have an exalting effect
expire (breathe out) - to die

respire (breathe again) - to breath, to take a breath
suspire (breathe below) - to draw a long breath

perspire (breathe through) - to sweat
conspire (breathe together) - to plot together in secret
aspire (breathe upon) - to strive for, to have ambition
transpire (breathe across) - to occur, to develop