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aspiration.

The act of aspiring or ardently desiring; an ardent wish or desire, chiefly after what is elevated or spiritual (with common adjunct adpositions being to and of).

10 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˌæspəˈɹeɪʃən/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˌæspəˈɹæɪʃən/Australia/ˌɛspəˈɹæɪʃən/New-Zealand
  1. The act of aspiring or ardently desiring; an ardent wish or desire, chiefly after what is elevated or spiritual (with common adjunct adpositions being to and of).

    countable · uncountable
    Riley has an aspiration to become a doctor.
    Morgan has an aspiration of winning the game.
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree English aspire Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *-Hō Proto-Indo-European *-tiHō Proto-Italic *-tiō Latin -tiō Latin -ātiōlbor. Old French -ationbor. Middle English -acioun English -ation English aspiration From aspire + -ation.

noun
  1. The action of aspirating.

    countable · uncountable
  2. A burst of air that follows the release of some consonants.

    countable · uncountable
    In Cambodian, aspiration is phonemic, so /p/ and /pʰ/ are different phonemes.
  3. The withdrawal of fluid, tissue, or other substance, usually through a hollow needle from a body cavity, cyst, or tumor.

    countable · uncountable
  4. The silent breaking h beginning some French words, largely of Germanic origin.

    countable · uncountable
  5. The process of lenition involving writing a digraph with h, especially at the beginning of a word.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From aspirate + -ion or borrowed from Latin aspīrātiō.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.