Aspiring

How to spell aspiring

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce aspiring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aspiring mean?

1. adjectiveHaving ambitions to achieve a particular career, status, or goal.
2. verbPresent participle of aspire: directing one's hopes or ambitions toward a goal.

Aspiring in a sentence

• adjective

  The workshop is aimed at aspiring novelists who want their first book published.

• verb

  She kept aspiring to a partnership at the firm despite the long hours.

• adjective

  As an aspiring chef, she spent every weekend testing new recipes at home.

• verb

  He is aspiring to a seat on the council at the next local election.

Where does aspiring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb aspirare, which literally meant 'to breathe upon' or 'to breathe toward', formed from ad 'to, toward' and spirare 'to breathe'. The Romans extended that physical image of breathing in someone's direction into the idea of striving after or longing for something, as if one's breath were straining toward a goal. English took up aspire through Old French in the late 1400s, and the present participle aspiring soon came to describe a person reaching ambitiously for a higher position or achievement. The same spirare root breathes through a whole family of English words, including respire, inspire, perspire and spirit, all of which share the central idea of breath. Knowing that 'spir' carries the breathing sense helps fix the single 's' and single 'p' in the spelling.

How the word is built

• a- (from Latin ad-: toward)
• spir (from spirare: to breathe)
• -ing (adjective/participle suffix)