aspirate
verbUK /ˈæs.pəɹ.eɪt/ · US /ˈæs.pə.ɹeɪt/
Etymology Learned borrowing from Latin aspīrātus.
1
To remove a liquid or gas by means of suction.
- Scrape cells using a cell scraper and aspirate the resulting slurry into a 2.0-mL Eppendorf tube.2003, Miep H. Helfrich et al., editors, Bone Research Protocols, page 430:
2
To inhale something other than air into one's lungs.
3
To suffocate, having inhaled something other than air.
- The autopsy found that the casualty had aspirated in her sleep.
4
Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences Ambitransitive To produce an audible puff of breath, especially following a consonant, such as the letter "h" at the beginning of house or hat in standard English.
- There is no doubt that the uncertainty about the letter H, which much defaces English in some classes of the community, is due entirely to Norman influence, for Frenchmen could not aspirate. Three words—hour, honor, heir, with compounds of them such as hourly, honourable, heirship, and the like, are quite enough to puzzle people who find H sometimes sounded, sometimes not.1887, James Frederick Hodgetts, Greater England, page 33:
- Synonyms
- breathe in, inhale, inspire
- Derived terms
- bronchoaspirate, deaspirate, lipoaspirate, microaspirate, reaspirate