DictionaryAI

ambition

am-BISH-uhn/æmˈbɪʃ.ən/

Pluralambitions

Verbambitions, ambitioning, ambitioned

6 meanings of ambition

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  1. 1
    nouncountable or uncountable
    An eager, sometimes excessive desire for success, power, honor, or fame, and to distinguish oneself from other people.

    Political ambition drove him to run for higher office year after year.

    Her ambition for public recognition shaped every choice she made.

    Similaraspiration, desire, hunger, thirst

    Note

    Rome gave the word its shape. Latin ambitiō was literally "a going around," the candidate's round of soliciting votes, and the desire to rise grew out of that canvassing. Older writers used it as a charge: Francis Bacon condemns the "overspreading ambition and usurpation" of Rome, and Edmund Burke scorns the "pitiful Ambition" of a few more acres. Today it is just as often praise, as when a child who wants to be a firefighter "has a lot of ambition."

  2. 2
    noununcountable
    A personal quality resembling motivation: the inner drive to achieve, not necessarily directed at any single goal.

    Ambition is what separates those who coast from those who keep improving.

    Years of routine work had never dimmed her ambition.

    Similardrive, motivation, determination, initiative, enterprise

    Oppositeapathy, complacency, laziness

  3. 3
    nouncountable
    A specific aim or goal that someone ardently desires to attain.

    Climbing Everest remained the one ambition he never abandoned.

    Her ambitions included publishing a novel and learning to sail.

    Similargoal, aim, dream, aspiration, objective

    Note

    Here the word turns countable. An ambition is the goal itself, so it takes an article and a plural. Its typical frame is a possessive, then is to, then an infinitive: my ambition is to own a helicopter. That frame names the thing wanted. The wanting itself belongs to the drive for distinction, which is usually uncountable.

  4. 4
    nouncountable or uncountable
    A desire for another person to gain distinction, honor, power, or fame.

    Parental ambition for the eldest son often overshadowed the younger children's wishes.

    Her ambition for her protégé exceeded any she held for herself.

    Similaraspiration, hope

  5. 5
    verbtransitive
    To eagerly seek after something; to covet a desired object or position.

    He ambitioned a place among the nation's great statesmen.

    Courtiers ambition the favor of the king above all else.

    Similarcovet, seek, crave, desire

    Note

    A verb that takes its object directly, with no preposition. C. Turnbull's The Histories of Marcus Junianus Justinus (1746) has Pausanias "ambitioning the sovereignty of Greece." The noun needs a preposition (an ambition for power), but the verb does not: one ambitions power, a throne, a place. Its forms are regular: ambitions, ambitioning, ambitioned.

Less common meaning

  1. 6
    nounobsoletecountable or uncountable
    The act of going about to solicit votes or favor in order to obtain an office or other coveted object: essentially canvassing.
    Note

    The literal Roman sense survives here: the actual going around for votes behind the desire for distinction. Milton still uses it in Samson Agonistes (1671), where Samson "Us'd no ambition to commend my deeds," meaning he did no soliciting for praise. The sense is obsolete. In older verse, read it as campaigning, not longing. In new writing it would simply be misread as desire.

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Origin

This word comes through Middle English ambicioun and Old French ambition from Latin ambitiō, meaning 'a striving for favor'. It literally meant 'a going around', from ambiō ('I go around, solicit votes'), referring especially to candidates for office in Rome going about to gather votes.