Aspiration

How to spell aspiration

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce aspiration

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aspiration mean?

1. nounA strong hope, ambition, or goal that someone wishes to achieve.
2. nounThe act of drawing breath, or the drawing of fluid or matter into or out of the body.

Aspiration in a sentence

• Her lifelong aspiration was to run her own bakery.

• The surgeon ordered an aspiration of the fluid around the lung.

• The company shares his aspiration to expand into new markets.

• Choking on food can lead to aspiration into the airway.

Where does aspiration come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb aspirare, which literally meant 'to breathe upon' or 'to blow toward', built from the prefix ad- meaning 'to' or 'toward' and spirare meaning 'to breathe'. The noun form aspiratio first described the act of breathing or of adding a breathy 'h' sound to a letter, a sense still alive in phonetics today. Because reaching eagerly toward a goal feels like straining and breathing hard after something, the figurative meaning of 'a strong desire or ambition' developed naturally. English took the word in the 1400s, originally for the breathing sense, with the 'hope or ambition' meaning becoming common a little later. The same spirare root sits inside familiar relatives like inspire, perspire, and respiration, and that buried 'spir' is the key to spelling aspiration correctly.

How the word is built

• a-/ad- (toward)
• spir (breathe, from Latin spirare)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)