The act of going about to solicit or obtain an office, or any other object of desire; canvassing. [Obs.] [I] used no ambition to commend my deeds. Milton.
An eager, and sometimes an inordinate, desire for preferment, honor, superiority, power, or the attainment of something. Cromwell, I charge thee, fling a way ambition: By that sin fell the angels. Shak. The pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand more acres. Burke.
To seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to covet. [R.] Pausanias, ambitioning the sovereignty of Greece, bargains with Xerxes for his daughter in marriage. Trumbull.
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