[ad. L. aspīrātus, pa. pple. of aspīrāre: see ASPIRE v. and -ATE2. Cf. Fr. aspiré.]
A. ppl. adj. = ASPIRATED. ?
1669. Holder, Elem. Speech, 71 (J.). They are not Aspirate, i. e. with such an Aspiration as H.
1751. Chambers, Cycl., The Spiritus of the Greeks, our h aspirate.
1879. Whitney, Skr. Gram., 13. Consonants—Aspirate Mutes.
B. sb.
1. A consonantal sound in which the action of the breath is prominently marked; one which is followed by or blended with the sound of H.
(Modern phonologists generally apply the term to a consonantal diphthong consisting of a mute or stop followed by ‘the slipping-out of an audible bit of flatus or aspiration, between the breach of mute-closure and the following sound’ (Whitney), which is believed to be the character of the Sanskrit ‘aspirates,’ and to have been the original value of the Gr. χ, θ, φ. But the term is also applied in Gr. grammar to the current fricative value of these letters; and in the Roman alphabet generally to any modification of sound indicated by the addition of h; e.g., to the Celtic bh, mh (= v, and nasalized v); in Hebrew it has been given to the gutturals, and in other languages it has been used with similar vagueness).
1727–51. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., Some … write the aspirates, or letters aspirated. Ibid. The eastern languages which do not express the vowels, do yet express the Aspirates.
1859. Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, Pric. Beauty, II. iii. § 31. 223. Gutturals, and rough aspirates, and strongly marked consonants are the most sudden and forcible inflections.
1879. Whitney, Skr. Gram., 13. That the aspirates, all of them, are real mutes or contact sounds, and not fricatives (like European th, ph, ch, etc.) is beyond question.
2. The simple sound of the letter H, or its equivalent the πνεῦμα δασύ, or spiritus asper (‘) of Greek grammar. Esp. applied to the initial h- so often ‘dropped,’ or improperly inserted, by the uneducated in England.
1725. Pope, Pref. Homer. The feebler Æolic which often rejects its aspirate or takes off its accent.
1872. Geo. Eliot, Middlem., xxxv. (1873), 196. A Middlemarch mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates.
1877. Punch, 18 Aug., 65. Our old Cockney friend, ’Arry, who is weak in aspirates.
¶ Some writers have altered this word to asperate, after the spiritus asper of the Latin grammarians, an ingenious but unfounded conceit.
