Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To have a great ambition or ultimate goal; desire strongly.
  • intransitive verb To strive toward an end or condition.
  • intransitive verb Archaic To rise high; move upwards.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To breathe to or into.
  • To breathe forth or exhale.
  • To breathe after; seek with eagerness to attain to; long or try to reach; attempt.
  • To mount or soar to; attain.
  • To be eagerly desirous; aim ambitiously, especially at something great or noble; be ambitious: followed by an object with to or after, or by an infinitive: as, to aspire to a crown or after immortality.
  • To rise up as an exhalation, or as smoke or fire; hence, to mount or ascend; tower up or rise high.
  • noun Aspiration; ardent wish or desire.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To desire with eagerness; to seek to attain something high or great; to pant; to long; -- followed by to or after, and rarely by at
  • intransitive verb To rise; to ascend; to tower; to soar.
  • transitive verb obsolete To aspire to; to long for; to try to reach; to mount to.
  • noun obsolete Aspiration.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To hope or dream; especially to hope or work towards a profession or occupation (followed by to as a preposition or infinitive particle).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb have an ambitious plan or a lofty goal

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English aspiren, from aspirer, from Latin aspīrāre, to desire; see aspirate.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French aspirer.

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Examples

Comments

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  • A vampire snake.

    March 25, 2009

  • The wrath of a snake. (see Cleopatra)

    Funeral rites for a donkey.

    March 26, 2009