AMBITIOUS

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having a strong desire for success or achievement

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

pushful; pushy (marked by aggressive ambition and energy and initiative)

aspirant; aspiring; wishful (desiring or striving for recognition or advancement)

compulsive; determined; driven (strongly motivated to succeed)

manque; would-be (unfulfilled or frustrated in realizing an ambition)

overambitious (excessively ambitious)

Also:

enterprising (marked by imagination, initiative, and readiness to undertake new projects)

Attribute:

ambition; ambitiousness (a strong drive for success)

Antonym:

unambitious (having little desire for success or achievement)

Derivation:

ambition; ambitiousness (a strong drive for success)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Requiring full use of your abilities or resources

Example:

performed the most challenging task without a mistake

Synonyms:

ambitious; challenging

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

difficult; hard (not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure)

Derivation:

ambition (a cherished desire)

Credits

Context examples:

He started at the word "ambitious."

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Your father and mother seem so totally free from all those ambitious feelings which have led to so much misconduct and misery, both in young and old.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Japan’s Hayabusa 2 mission to Ryugu is among the most bold and ambitious space missions that humans have ever launched and now, for the first time, we as a species have captured video footage on the surface of an asteroid.

(First Ever Video of Asteroid Sent Back to Earth by Japanese Rovers, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

You are in a land which offers such an inducement to the ambitious naturalist as none ever has since the world began, and you suggest leaving it before we have acquired more than the most superficial knowledge of it or of its contents.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This was the pride of Dave as wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride that laid hold of them at break of camp, transforming them from sour and sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride that spurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night, letting them fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

In the end there remained only four: the she-wolf, the young leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three- year-old.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

She's so ambitious, but her heart is good and tender, and no matter how high she flies, she never will forget home.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The storiettes at least kept the pot a-boiling and gave him time for ambitious work; while the one thing that upheld him was the forty dollars he had received from The White Mouse.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

With many planets lining up in Capricorn, those you meet will be highly successful, ambitious types, and they will be glad to introduce you to their friends.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon.