Definition of "aspiration" []

• Expulsion of breath in speech. (noun)
• Linguistics The pronunciation of a consonant with an aspirate. (noun)
• Linguistics A speech sound produced with an aspirate. (noun)
• The act of breathing in; inhalation. (noun)
• Medicine The process of removing fluids or gases from the body with a suction device. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "You cannot have too much of that yearning which we call aspiration, for, even though you do not attain your ideal, the efforts you make will bring nothing but blessing; while he who fails of attaining mere worldly goals is too often eaten up with the canker-worm of disappointed ambition."
• "If my intense desire to see the friend, from whom I have parted, does not bring him from the other side of the world, or take me thither; if the mother's agonised prayer that her child should live has not prevented him from dying; experience certainly affords no presumption that the strong desire to be alive after death, which we call the aspiration after immortality, is any more likely to be gratified."
• "Until then, you will need to tube feed your pup to keep them strong and also to prevent them from swallowing food into the lungs causing what we call aspiration pneumonia."