ambition

From Middle English ambicion, from Old French ambition, from Latin ambitiō (“ambition, a striving for favor, literally 'a going around', especially of candidates for office in Rome soliciting votes”), from ambiō (“I go around, solicit votes”). See ambient, issue.

• (US) IPA^(key): /æmˈbɪ.ʃən/

• Audio (US)

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ambition (countable and uncountable, plural ambitions)

1. (uncountable, countable) Eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or literary fame; desire to distinguish one's self from other people.

   My son, John, wants to be a firefighter very much. He has a lot of ambition.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Burke

     the pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand more acres

2. (countable) An object of an ardent desire.

   My ambition is to own a helicopter.

3. A desire, as in (sense 1), for another person to achieve these things.
4. (uncountable) A personal quality similar to motivation, not necessarily tied to a single goal.
5. (obsolete) The act of going about to solicit or obtain an office, or any other object of desire; canvassing.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     [I] used no ambition to commend my deeds.

For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:ambition.

• ambience
• ambient
• ambit
• ambitious
• ambitionist

ambition (third-person singular simple present ambitions, present participle ambitioning, simple past and past participle ambitioned)

1. To seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to covet.

   Pausanias, ambitioning the sovereignty of Greece, bargains with Xerxes for his daughter in marriage. — Trumbull.

• ambition in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• ambition in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

ambition

1. Genitive singular form of ambitio.

From Latin ambitiō

• IPA^(key): /ɑ̃.bi.sjɔ̃/

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ambition f (plural ambitions)

1. ambition (feeling)

• ambitieux
• ambitionner

• “ambition” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

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ambition c

1. en ambition

• ambitiös