Best Wishes: The Difference Between “Hope” and “Aspire”
⚡ Quick summary
Use hope to express a wish or desired outcome (often without control), and aspire to express a deliberate ambition or goal that someone actively strives for.
Hope and aspire are synonyms that both refer to wishes for future events. But what separates these two similar words?
Hope
Hope means “to look forward to with desire, or to feel that something desired may happen.” It can have a somewhat passive connotation; to hope for something doesn’t necessarily imply that you are doing anything to actually make it occur.
- I hope that my work will be satisfactory.
- We hope for an early spring.
Aspire
To aspire is to seek ambitiously, especially for something great. It tends to be used when someone actively commits to a goal, either as a general objective or with a specific plan.
- She aspires to become a doctor.
- Every day, he aspires to be a better person than he was the day before.
