aspire
Formsaspires, aspiring, aspired
- 1To have a strong hope or ambition of achieving something.
She aspires to become a surgeon after finishing medical school.
Young writers often aspire to publish their first novel.
Similardream, strive, yearn, pursue, crave
Note
The meaning in everyday use, and one the Latin already carried: aspīrō covered 'breathe on', 'approach' and 'desire'. The verb needs a link to its goal: aspire to, for or after something, or an infinitive (he aspires to become a doctor). A that-clause is also possible, as in 'we aspire that the world will be a better place'. Shakespeare and Fletcher use the to-construction in 1613: 'that smile we would aspire to.'
- 2To rise or extend upward; to reach a great height.
The ancient stone columns aspire toward the vaulted ceiling.
Seas that restlessly aspire, / Surging, unto skies of fire;
1844, Edgar Allan Poe, “Dream-Land”Similarrise, soar, tower, ascend
Note
Upward motion with no goal in view: towers, mountain passes, and seas that 'restlessly aspire, / Surging, unto skies of fire' in Poe's 'Dream-Land' (1844). It is a poet's verb, and the participle carries it into modern prose. Marlowe gives a temple an 'aspiring toppe', and Cormac McCarthy's Suttree (1979) has 'aspiring insects' circling a streetlamp, where rising and striving blur. Outside literary writing, rise or soar is the safer choice.
- 3To rise as high as something or get all the way to its top.
Mercutio’s dead! / That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds,
c. 1591, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”rockes so high / That birds could scarce aspire their ridgy toppes
c. 1608, George Chapman, The Conspiracy and Tragedy of CharlesNote
A verb of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century stage that took its height directly, with no preposition. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio's "gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds"; in Chapman, birds could scarce aspire the ridgy tops of rocks. Only the ambition sense survives, and it needs to (aspire to a throne). Writing aspire the summit today reads as a mistake, so use ascend or mount instead.
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Origin
This word comes from Middle English 'aspiren', from Old French 'aspirer', which came from Latin 'aspīrō', meaning 'breathe on', 'approach', or 'desire'.