Search the Dictionary

olicit or obtain an office, or any other object of desire; canvassing. [Obs.] [I] used no ambition to commend my deeds. Milton.

One excessively ambitious. [R.]

Devoid of ambition. Pollok.

The absence of ambition. [R.] F. W. Newman.

tuate by the perpetual motion. Johnson. Men of the greatest abilities are most fired with ambition; and, on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the least actuated by it. Addison.

Possessing, or controlled by, ambition; greatly or inordinately desirous of power, honor, office, superiority, or distinction. Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honorable man. Shak.

The quality of being ambitious; ambition; pretentiousness.

To pretend to possess; to take in appearance. Ambition assuming the mask of religion. Porteus. Assume a virtue, if you have it not. Shak.

hence, a member of that order. (b) Anything the attainment of which is an object of great ambition; a distinction; a prize. "These [scholarships] were the blue ribbon of the college." Farrar.

presenting the upper part of the human figure, including the head, shoulders, and breast. Ambition sighed: she found it vain to trust The faithless column, and the crumbling bust. Pope.

rs the force and effect of causes, with a view to form a correct estimate of the effects. Ambition is no exact calculator. Burke.

charged you to love the Lord your God. Josh. xxii. 5. Cromwell, I charge thee, fing away ambition. Shak.

f mind; solicitude; anxiety. While they are so eager to destory the fame of others, their ambition is manifest in their concernment. Dryden.

s self by intemperance; to debauch a woman; to debauch an army. Learning not debauched by ambition. Burke. A man must have got his conscience thoroughly debauched and hardened before he can arrive to the height of sin. South. Her pride debauched her judgment and her eyes. Cowley.

s with a motto, used apart from heraldic bearings to denote the historical situation, the ambition, or the desire of the person adopting it. See Cognizance.

fore; formerly; heretofore. Chaucer. Tityrus, with whose style he had erst disclaimed all ambition to match his pastoral pipe. A. W. Ward. At erst, at first; at the beginning. -- Now at erst, at this present time. Chaucer.

their eyes as a thing feasible in practice. Burke. It was not feasible to gratify so many ambitions. Beaconsfield.

Lofty elevation and excursion;a mounting; a soaas, a flight of imagination, ambition, folly. Could he have kept his spirit to that flight, He had been happy. Byron. His highest flights were indeed far below those of Taylor. Macaulay.

To excite; to animate; to stir. Such things as can only feed his pride and flush his ambition. South.

One whose ambition it is to gain admiration by showy dress; a coxcomb; an inferior dandy.