# ambitious
## English
### Etymology

From Middle English ambitious, from Middle French ambitieus, from Latin ambitiosus, from ambitio; see ambition. Compare with French ambitieux.

### Pronunciation

* (US) IPA: /æmˈbɪʃ.əs/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Rhymes: -ɪʃəs

### Adjective

ambitious (comparative ambitiouser or more ambitious, superlative ambitiousest or most ambitious)
* (of a person or their character) Having or showing ambition; wanting a lot of power, honor, respect, superiority, or other distinction.
    an ambitious person
    someone's ambitious nature
** 1829, Edgar Allan Poe, “Tamerlane”, in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems:I was ambitious—have you known The passion, father? You have not: A cottager, I mark’d a throne Of half the world as all my own, And murmur’d at such lowly lot— […]
** 1891, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Man with the Twisted Lip:As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the country, and eventually married, without anyone having a suspicion as to my real occupation.
* (followed by "of" or the infinitive) Very desirous
** 30 June 2019, Sam Wallace in The Telegraph, Manchester United must shape Aaron Wan-Bissaka into a £50m all-rounder - but there is no hiding place at Old Trafford
    Now he is joining a club ambitious to return to a model of dominating games and attacking opposition.
** 1864, Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods:We were soon in the midst of the rapids, which were more swift and tumultuous than any we had poled up, and had turned to the side of the stream for the purpose of warping, when the boatmen, who felt some pride in their skill, and were ambitious to do something more than usual
* Resulting from, characterized by, or indicating, ambition
    Synonyms: showy, aspiring
    an ambitious project
    an ambitious style
    an ambitious attempt to take power
    an ambitious plan
    an ambitious goal
* Hard to achieve.
** 2013 June 1, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly):A “moving platform” scheme […] is more technologically ambitious than maglev trains even though it relies on conventional rails. Local trains would use side-by-side rails to roll alongside intercity trains and allow passengers to switch trains by stepping through docking bays. This set-up solves several problems […] . Stopping high-speed trains wastes energy and time, so why not simply slow them down enough for a moving platform to pull alongside?

#### Antonyms

* nonambitious
* unambitious

#### Derived terms

* ambitiously
* ambitiousness
* hyperambitious
* overambitious
* superambitious
* underambitious

#### Related terms

* ambition

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### References

* ambitious in An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster, 1828.
* “ambitious”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* “ambitious”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
* "ambitious" in the Wordsmyth Dictionary-Thesaurus (Wordsmyth, 2002)
* "ambitious" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
* “ambitious”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.