ambition - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Proto-Indo-European *h₁ey-

Proto-Italic *ejō

Proto-Italic *eō

Proto-Indo-European *-tis

Proto-Indo-European *-tiHō

English ambition

From Middle English ambicioun, 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 (“to go around, solicit votes”). See ambient, issue. By surface analysis, ambit +‎ -ion.

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 fame; desire to distinguish one's self from other people.
    My daughter, Johanna, wants to be a firefighter very much. She has a lot of ambition.
    • a. 1627 (date written), Francis Bacon, chapter VII, in James Spedding, editor, The Works of Francis Bacon, […]: The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon […], volume IV, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, published 1858, →OCLC, page 270:
      The third part of practice hath divers branches, but one principal root in these our times, which is the vast and overspreading ambition and usurpation of the see of Rome; […]
  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.

desire

object of desire

desire for another person to achieve these things

personal quality

Translations to be checked

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.
    • 1746, C Turnbull, The Histories Of Marcus Junianus Justinus:
      Pausanias, ambitioning the sovereignty of Greece, bargains with Xerxes for his daughter in marriage.

From French ambition, from Latin ambitiō.

ambition c (singular definite ambitionen, plural indefinite ambitioner)

  1. ambition

ambition

  1. genitive singular of ambitio

Learned borrowing from Latin ambitiō.

ambition f (plural ambitions)

  1. ambition

ambition c

  1. ambition