unaspiring

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ aspiring.

Adjective

unaspiring (comparative more unaspiring, superlative most unaspiring)

1. Lacking ambition; not aspiring to any goal.
   • 1882, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida Husted Harper, History of Woman Suffrage: 1861-1876:

     But American women are not unawakened or unaspiring. To many of them, life has grown painful, because their advancing ideal is dishonored by a sense of violated justice.

   • 1912, John Muir, The Yosemite:

     A more contented, fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be conceived. All the species we have been sketching make departures more or less distant from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as this. Without any apparent cause it keeps near the ground, throwing out crooked, divergent branches like an orchard apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot higher than fifteen or twenty feet above the ground.

   • 2000, Sri Chinmoy, The Wisdom of Sri Chinmoy:

     First you have to realize the Highest. Only then can you dare to mix with unaspiring people. When you mix with unaspiring people, it is as if you are going to visit a mental hospital. Unless you yourself are very powerful, you will also be affected.

Derived terms

• unaspiringly
• unaspiringness

References

• “unaˈspiring, ppl. a.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd ed., 1989]

Anagrams

• unpraising