How to Use aspirate in a Sentence

aspirate

verb
  • The letter “h” in “house” is aspirated, but the “h” in “hour” is not.
  • She began coughing when she aspirated some orange juice.
  • Doctors can use saline to aspirate fluid from the nose with a catheter instead.
    — Matthew Herper, STAT, 21 Mar. 2020
  • Charles held his wife and helped aspirate her between compressions.
    — Dallas News, 6 May 2022
  • Her nephew Daniel choked and aspirated from bottle feeding at 6 months old.
    — Lilly Price, Baltimore Sun, 11 Aug. 2023
  • The hand surgeon may elect to aspirate the fluid from the cyst, which usually is effective.
    — Dr. Keith Roach, oregonlive, 30 Mar. 2022
  • Solid food could lead him to aspirate into his lungs and risk a life-threatening infection.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 30 Aug. 2019
  • So to reach the ovaries, scientists need to use a special tool with an ultrasound probe and needle at the end to aspirate the egg cells.
    — Alessandra Potenza, The Verge, 6 Apr. 2018
  • Falling and aspirating food and getting pneumonia — all these subtle ways that get you.
    — Carly Thomas, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Nov. 2023
  • All that protects us from aspirating is a thin, cartilaginous flap of tissue called the epiglottis.
    — Douglas Jacobs, Washington Post, 7 Mar. 2018
  • Redman then began to aspirate and passed out, losing control of the vehicle and crashing.
    — Tony Rizzo, kansascity, 20 Mar. 2018
  • The person is also more likely to aspirate food or bacteria into their lungs, which can lead to pneumonia.
    — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 16 Nov. 2023
  • For instance, many children have trouble swallowing, which leads them to aspirate, which can lead to pneumonia.
    — Washington Post, 7 June 2018
  • Bacteria first make a home in the mouth and then can be aspirated, or inhaled, into the lungs to cause serious infections.
    — Frank Scannapieco, The Conversation, 17 Sep. 2019
  • Our people are not dying from a foreign war on foreign soil, but aspirating surrounded by strange faces in hospital rooms down the street.
    — Chastity Pratt, Detroit Free Press, 5 Apr. 2020
  • Another check by the vet revealed that the dog had aspirated some of her vomit and was now battling a lung infection and pneumonia because of it.
    — Kelli Bender, PEOPLE, 30 Sep. 2025
  • If the breast imaging reveals your lump is fluid-filled and therefore a cyst, the doctor may choose to aspirate it, which involves sticking a needle in the cyst to drain the fluid.
    — Jenny McCoy, Glamour, 1 Oct. 2020
  • In all of these scenarios, people frequently vomit and aspirate, bringing fluid into the lungs.
    — Katherine Ellen Foley, Quartz, 16 Oct. 2020
  • Even patients who are NPO will continue to aspirate if their dysphagia is severe enough.
    — Douglas Jacobs, Washington Post, 7 Mar. 2018
  • As one doctor describes it on her blog, drowning happens when someone aspirates, which is the technical term for something passing the trachea into the lungs.
    — Elizabeth Armstrong Moore, Fox News, 14 July 2017
  • When the pipette is brand new, aspirating 5 microliters of blood might require the little motor that activates the pipette’s pump to rotate by a certain amount.
    — John Carreyrou, WIRED, 21 May 2018
  • Oh, and listen for the 9000-rpm, naturally aspirated flat-six.
    — Alexander Stoklosa, Car and Driver, 28 Mar. 2018
  • All Actys share naturally aspirated gasoline engines, which are mounted just in front of the rear wheels underneath the rear floor.
    — Devin Holody, Ars Technica, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Of this bunch, only the Ferraris are naturally aspirated.
    — Jerry Perez, The Drive, 8 Apr. 2026
  • Avoid the towing package or opt for the base naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine and that figure falls to 2000 pounds.
    — Austin Irwin, Car and Driver, 21 July 2023
  • The Mayo Clinic recommends breathing through your mouth and avoiding forceful inhales so that your don't lodge the object further up or aspirate it into your airway.
    — Carolyn L. Todd, SELF, 7 July 2021
  • Two days later, Reid and his wife were called to Curran’s room, where Curran lay unconscious, probably after aspirating on his own vomit.
    — Susan Glaser, cleveland.com, 15 July 2019
  • Those two moves dealt with a problem called dead volume, and essentially making the cups smaller made the needle that went in the blood and aspirated the blood closer to the bottom, and diluting the blood created more volume.
    — Recode Staff, Recode, 3 June 2018
  • So certain engines, turbocharged, supercharged versus naturally aspirated, and then your weather, right?
    — Kyle Cheromcha, The Drive, 1 Apr. 2026
  • He was jailed on a $100 bond, and his family did not find out until after he was hospitalized for aspirating on his own vomit while sheriff’s deputies restrained him during a psychotic episode.
    — Monique Judge, The Root, 1 Nov. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'aspirate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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