How to use ambition in a sentence
40 example sentences · noun, verb
Ambition means eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or fame; desire to distinguish one's self from other people. Example: “My daughter, Johanna, wants to be a firefighter very much. She has a lot of ambition.”
Examples of ambition by meaning
nounEager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political...
- My daughter, Johanna, wants to be a firefighter very much. She has a lot of ambition.
nounAn object of an ardent desire.
- My ambition is to own a helicopter.
More sentences with ambition
- Despite their artistic ambitions, they were never able to escape the label of a pop group.From the entry pop group
- She finally carried out her lifelong ambition when she appeared in a Hollywood blockbuster.From the entry carry out
- There are some who question the scale of our ambitions.From the entry scale
- Civil dissensions often spirit the ambition of private men.From the entry spirit
- My ambitions were crippled by a lack of money.From the entry cripple
- His ability is on a par with his ambition.From the entry on a par
- She had ambitions beyond her station.From the entry station
- I waited tables, auditioned, pieced together a life out of odd jobs and ambition.2026 April 22, Jillian Sanders, “The Danger of Surrendering Your Financial Independence in a Relationship”, in TIME, archived from the…. From the entry wait tables
- It is a noble ambition, and the forces arrayed against it are mighty.2025, Karen Hao, Empire of AI, New York City: Penguin Press, →ISBN. From the entry array
- But China has big time ambitions around driving down the energy use of its data centers.2025 October 29, Mike Pearl, “China Submerges a Data Center in the Ocean to Conserve Water. Is That Even a Good Idea? Data centers are…. From the entry pue
- Writing a professional music review is a niche ambition at this point.2025 December 1, Tobias Hess, “Why the Music Critics Keep Writing”, in Study Hall, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Study Hall LLC. From the entry Swiftology
- The pop-ups, most of them in Paris, vary in cuisine, ambition and price.2024 July 15, Priya Krishna, “France’s Approach to the Olympics: Food, With a Side of Games”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The…. From the entry chouquette
- His was the spirit of the age: self-deprecating, metrosexual, all ironic distance, no ambition.2023 October 29, Zoe Williams, “‘An ironic, self-deprecating metrosexual’: how Matthew Perry captured the spirit of the age”, in The…. From the entry metrosexual
- "Cakeism" has run riot — vast, incoherent ambitions detached from political, economic and business realities.2022, The Guardian, "Brexit legacy is just the start of incoming PM's problems as cost of living crisis spirals", Will Hutton, 10 July 2022. From the entry cakeism
- Corbyn's lack of ambition would turn out to be one of his great selling points.2021 March 2, Donald Sassoon, Morbid Symptoms: An Anatomy of a World in Crisis, Verso Books, →ISBN, page 140. From the entry headbanger
- Or perhaps something darker—a raw hunger, a blind ambition wrapped in the gauzy language of service?2020, Barack Obama, A Promised Land, Crown. From the entry gauzy
- What began as a lark has grown into something very, very big, inflating the company’s ambitions.2018 November, Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Dangers of YouTube for Young Children”, in The Atlantic. From the entry lark
- Yet Brexit and Johnson’s ambitions are not the only plotlines in Birmingham.2018, Matthew d'Ancona, “The Tories are a party in crisis, their identity in desperate shape”, in Guardian. From the entry plotlines
- Putin’s ambitions to project his country as an Asian power is in reality Chinese territory.2016 July 23, Andrew Higgins, “Vladivostok Lures Chinese Tourists (Many Think It’s Theirs)”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived…. From the entry Manchuria
- The ambitions for schmeat are huge, but the taste evidently falls short of a standard burger.2013 August 5, Catherine Mayer, “Meet 'Schmeat': Say Hello to the Stem-Cell Hamburger”, in Time, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC…. From the entry shmeat
- A hustler has ambition and a more serious approach to life.2013, Gayton McKenzie, A Hustler's Bible, →ISBN, page 5. From the entry outcun
- So the grandiose ambitions of the tsarevny’s fathers led to lifelong spinsterhood for them.2012, Barbara Evans Clements, A History of Women in Russia: From Earliest Times to the Present, Indiana University Press, →ISBN, pages 37–38. From the entry tsarevna
- Everyone had expected the economic recession to put a crimp in Davis's ambitions.2012, Bill Finch, Beth Maynor Young, Rhett Johnson, Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See, →ISBN. From the entry put a crimp in
- Jack's checklist-life could not have got much better compared to his childhood ambitions.2012, Mark Wollacott, “Blank Jack (Teaser)”, in 108 Breaths, Circencester, Gloustershire: Wyrd Works, →ISBN, page 112. From the entry walk-on girl
- To stoke motivation and ambition, focus instead on the road ahead.2011, Roy F. Baumeister, John Tierney, Willpower, →ISBN, page 120. From the entry stoke
- In his songs Jay-Z has singlemindedly flaunted his executive ambitions and how they’ve paid off.2009 September 13, Jon Pareles, “An Overdog to Root For”, in The New York Times. From the entry singlemindedly
- He drew deeply there, quelling his intellectual insecurities and nourishing his fanatic ambitions.2009 January 2, Timothy W. Ryback, “First Chapter: Hitler’s Private Library”, in New York Times, retrieved 09 Aug 2015. From the entry Pierian Spring
- He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.2008 June 20, David Brooks, “The Two Obamas”, in New York Times. From the entry polysyllabically
- He had sincere ambition, and he would soak up information like a "ShamWOW" sponge.2008, Jeff Zahratka, Sweepers Sweepers Man Your Brooms: An Enlisted Man's Story, page 167. From the entry ShamWow
- Besson realized his ambition to meld visionary, megabudget Hollywood-style spectacle to French sensibility.2007 May 20, Jaime Wolf, “Le Cinéma du Blockbuster”, in New York Times. From the entry megabudget
- Gerald's special mixture of laziness and ambition seemed to crystallize under the camera into brutal bumptiousness.2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 13, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN. From the entry bumptiousness
- Rather, Biji's ambitions were much more exact, exactness being a characteristic she shared with her misfingered kinsman.1989, Arthur Rosenfeld, Harpoons, page 58. From the entry misfingered
- What made the Gadiantons serious ideological opponents of republicanism rather than mere thugs were their political ambitions.1989, Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830–1846, →ISBN, page 33. From the entry Gadianton
- Freud's originality stemmed from his aggression and ambition in his agon with biology.1986 March 23, Harold Bloom, “Freud, the Greatest Modern Writer”, in New York Times. From the entry agon
- I must endure my goading ambition until I can acknowledge ownership of all of my owndom.1980, John Morris Dorsey, University professor John M. Dorsey. From the entry owndom
- Reform here was a tenuous thing, dependent upon the ebb and flow of outsiders’ ambitions.1978, Angus W. McDonald, Jr., “Power”, in The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution: Elites and the Masses in Hunan Province, China…. From the entry Fujian
- But alas for aval ambitions; Sukarno turned out to be a visionary of quite a different sort.1973, Wilfred T. Neill, Twentieth-Century Indonesia, Columbia University Press, published 1973, →ISBN, page 299. From the entry aval
- Same dangers, deceptions, retreats; same large diplomatic ambitions abroad, and mean‐spirited placation at home.1972 November 5, Garry Wills, “Four more years? Learning to live with Nixon”, in The New York Times. From the entry four more years
Meaning of ambition
- noun Eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or fame; desire to distinguish one's self from other people.
- noun An object of an ardent desire.
- noun A desire, as in (sense 1), for another person to achieve these things.
Questions about ambition in a sentence
- How do you use ambition in a sentence?
- Ambition is used as a noun and verb. For example: “My daughter, Johanna, wants to be a firefighter very much. She has a lot of ambition.”
- What is a short sentence with ambition?
- “She had ambitions beyond her station.”
- What does ambition mean?
- Ambition means eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or fame; desire to distinguish one's self from other people.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ambition (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use ambition in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ambition. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
