ambitious
/æmˈbɪʃ.əs/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.95 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Having or showing ambition; wanting a lot of power, honor, respect, superiority, or other distinction.
adj
Very desirous.
adj
Resulting from, characterized by, or indicating, ambition.
Example Sentences
- "an ambitious person"
- "someone's ambitious nature"
- "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— […]"
- "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."
- "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."
- "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"
Etymology
From Middle English ambitious, from Middle French ambitieus, from Latin ambitiosus, from ambitio; see ambition. Compare with French ambitieux. By surface analysis, ambit + -ious.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₁ey-, ambitious, ambitieus, ambitiosus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /æmˈbɪʃ.əs/
Inflected Forms
ambitiouser (comparative)
more ambitious (comparative)
ambitiousest (superlative)
most ambitious (superlative)