means A sudden surge of mental stimulation or creative energy that prompts you to feel, think, or make something — and also, literally, the act of drawing breath into the lungs.

from From Latin inspirare, "to breathe into," from in- ("into") plus spirare ("to breathe") — the same root that gives us spirit and respiration. Early religious use was quite literal: a god or the divine breathed life, knowledge, or prophecy directly into a person. The metaphorical sense — being filled with a creative or intellectual impulse, as if breathed in from beyond — grew from there, which is why we still speak of inspiration as something that arrives rather than something we manufacture.