Other forms: ambitions
Ambition is the strong wish to achieve something big. Great ambition, her ambition to be a surgeon, lack ambition.
It is both the drive in general and the particular goal: my ambition is to finish it. English is oddly divided about the word — ambitious is praise in a job reference and an accusation in a novel. An ambitious plan means one that may be too big to work. Note overambitious; and that ambition originally meant going round canvassing for votes, which is not far from how it is often used now.
1nounambitionA strong wish to achieve something big.
“Her ambition was obvious to everybody except her.”
2nounparticularA particular goal somebody wants to reach.
“His ambition was to see the whole coast on foot.”
ambition is a drive or goal.
Latin ambitio means a going around, from ambire — candidates in Rome walked the city soliciting support. The word for canvassing became the word for the hunger that drives it.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁ey-
Middle English
ambicioun
English, today
ambition
Built from
From Middle English ambicioun. 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Big Ideas