inspiration
Pluralinspirations
- 1An elevating or stimulating influence that acts upon the intellect, emotions, or creativity.
She found inspiration in the quiet of the early morning hours.
The composer drew inspiration from the rhythms of the city.
Similarmotivation, spark
Note
The prepositions carry the grammar of the creative stirring. Use "to" for the person who is moved, and "for" or "to" for the task it serves. It can also describe a manner: in the American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897), a man answers "at first with uncertainty, then with inspiration." The word came from Latin through Old French. It displaced the Old English onbryrdnes, literally "in-pricked-ness."
- 2A person, object, or situation that stirs or stimulates the intellect, emotions, or creativity.
The young athlete became an inspiration to children across the country.
A crumbling old house served as the inspiration for her first novel.
Similarexample, model, influence, muse, stimulus
Note
Here the influence takes a face: the word names whoever or whatever does the stirring, rather than the stirring itself. Two constructions carry it. People are an inspiration to someone (George W. Bush called the people of Ukraine and Georgia "an inspiration to the world" in 2008), while the work it prompts takes for: the inspiration for a novel. A possessive fits too: Walter's passion and inspiration, in Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Ethel Churchill (1837).
- 3A new idea, especially a clever or creative one that arrives suddenly.
The recipe was a moment of pure inspiration, born from leftovers in the fridge.
Halfway through the meeting, she had an inspiration that changed the whole plan.
Similaridea, brainwave, thought, notion
Note
The sudden idea is almost always something a person has. "The Psychologist had an inspiration," writes H. G. Wells in The Time Machine (1895), and "Mrs. Balfame had an inspiration" in Gertrude Atherton's Mrs. Balfame (1916). In both, the idea itself follows at once, in the next line of speech. Unlike the inspiring person or thing, this inspiration is the product: it can be counted, and even patented.
- 4A supernatural divine influence on prophets, apostles, or sacred writers that qualified them to communicate religious truth with authority; also, the truth so communicated.
Theologians debate whether every word of scripture carries divine inspiration.
The apostle claimed his teachings flowed from inspiration rather than from human reasoning.
Similarrevelation
Note
Theology's sense has its own set phrase, divine inspiration, which Jacques Bénigne Bossuet pairs with grace in 1688. As an uncountable noun it names the influence itself. As a countable noun it names a single claimed revelation, which is why Bossuet can warn against men "feigning or imagining an inspiration." Keep the article in mind: it marks the difference between the gift and one instance of it.
- 5A single intake of air drawn into the lungs.
The nurse counted each inspiration to measure his breathing rate.
A deep inspiration filled her lungs before she dove underwater.
Similarinhalation
Oppositeexhalation, expiration
Note
The countable side of the breathing sense is the one clinicians count. Thomas Hodgkin's 1838 translation reports "97 inspirations per minute," and A. Kose and colleagues still give a respiratory rate in "inspirations per minute" in 2013. John Bostock, in 1826, builds laughter out of it: one inspiration followed by a run of short expirations. Unlike the physiological process, it takes an article and a plural.
- 6The drawing of air into the lungs, achieved in mammals by raising the chest walls and flattening the diaphragm, as part of breathing.
Inspiration occurs when the diaphragm contracts and the chest cavity widens.
The volume of air moved during quiet inspiration is fairly small.
Similarinhalation
Oppositeexhalation, expiration
Note
Physiology's name for the in-breath, the active half of respiration. The diaphragm and the external intercostal muscles contract, the chest cavity enlarges, pressure inside it falls, and air flows in. Its opposite is expiration, or exhalation, and inhalation is its everyday synonym. Used this way the noun is uncountable; counting breaths belongs to the single breath.
Practice
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Origin
This word came through Middle English inspiracioun and Old French inspiration from Late Latin īnspīrātiō, based on the Latin verb inspīrō. By surface analysis it is inspire plus -ation, and it replaced the native Old English onbryrdnes.