aspire

Etymology

From Middle English aspiren, from Old French aspirer, from Latin aspirare (“breathe on; approach; desire”).

verb

1. (intransitive) To have a strong desire or ambition to achieve something.
   to aspire to / for / after / to do something; to aspire that something happens
   He aspires to become a successful doctor.
   We aspire that the world will be a better place.
   We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous. 1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 23, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Random House, pages 177–178
   His own desire repulsed him. Though if he could not aspire to purity, then he was sufficiently aware of what his mother and certain others might think, not to give in to baseness. 2014, Damon Galgut, chapter 2, in Arctic Summer,, London: Atlantic Books, page 48
2. (transitive, obsolete) To go as high as, to reach the top of (something).
   rockes so high / That birds could scarce aspire their ridgy toppes c. 1608, George Chapman, The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, London: Thomas Thorppe, Act I, Scene 1
3. (intransitive, archaic, literary) To move upward; to be very tall.
   As they descended, they saw […] one of the grand passes of the Pyreneáes into Spain, gleaming with its battlements and towers to the splendour of the setting rays, yellow tops of woods colouring the steeps below, while far above aspired the snowy points of the mountains, still reflecting a rosy hue. 1794, Ann Radcliffe, chapter 4, in The Mysteries of Udolpho, volume 1, London: G.G. and J. Robinson, page 116
   Seas that restlessly aspire, / Surging, unto skies of fire; 1844 June, Edgar Allan Poe, “Dream-Land”, in Graham’s Magazine, volume 25, number 6, page 256
   There is a moonshaped rictus in the streetlamp’s globe where a stone has gone and from this aperture there drifts down through the constant helix of aspiring insects a faint and steady rain of the same forms burnt and lifeless. 1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, New York: Vintage, published 1992, page 4