Breath of life

Understanding words' origins sometimes helps one to appreciate a word's meaning.  Aspire and inspire are two such examples.  They are very close in meaning.  Aspire means to desire something of high value. Inspire means to influence someone to be better than that person would normally be.  Both words use the root spire, a derivation of Latin, to build on.

A quick look back in time shows the word spirare was used by Romans to mean breathe.  So, spirare was a really important word.  If a person stopped "spiring," then he or she would no longer exist.  When the word was used in the offspring language of French, it still meant breathe.  But the French introduced spire to the English after 1066, who began to augment the word with a couple of notable Latin prefixes.

At first in+spire meant simply "to breathe in" (inhale), but the English began using it to mean to breathe into oneself, and thus, to make one better than he or she normally is.  Aspire's history paralleled inspire's in both time and type of development.  The English added the Latin prefix a to spire to make a new word:  to breathe upon or toward.  And, of course, no one would breathe toward something unless he or she was desiring it.   And, who would desire something that was not of great value.
 
The English did one other thing - they retained the Romans' idea of "life-giving" or "spirited" with the word spire.  The Romans had another word for simply the intake of air.  Its history took a different route into English.  So, inspire and aspire took on a life-giving quality, or at least an increase of spirit, for its base meaning.

I'm glad to know this story about "breathing."  Life is easy to bog down in and to quit "spiring," so in order to rise above the bog and continue to "spire," one has to turn to someone who will give him life... someone who will breathe toward him... someone who will breathe into him... make him better, and alive... one of high value to be desired.  So, I am turning to catch that one's breath.