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Ambition vs Ingenuity - What's the difference?

ambition | ingenuity |

As nouns the difference between ambition and ingenuity

is that ambition is ambition for some particular achievement while ingenuity is the ability to solve difficult problems, often in original, clever, and inventive ways.

ambition

English

Noun

(en-noun)
  • (uncountable, countable) Eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or literary fame; desire to distinguish one's self from other people.
  • My son, John, wants to be a firefighter very much. He has a lot of ambition .
  • * Burke
  • the pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand more acres
  • (countable) An object of an ardent desire.
  • My ambition is to own a helicopter.
  • A desire, as in (sense 1), for another person to achieve these things.
  • (uncountable) A personal quality similar to motivation, not necessarily tied to a single goal.
  • (obsolete) The act of going about to solicit or obtain an office, or any other object of desire; canvassing.
  • * Milton
  • [I] used no ambition to commend my deeds.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to covet.
  • Pausanias, ambitioning the sovereignty of Greece, bargains with Xerxes for his daughter in marriage. — Trumbull.

    ingenuity

    English

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • The ability to solve difficult problems, often in original, clever, and inventive ways.
  • The pyramids demonstrate the ingenuity of the ancient Egyptians.
    Poverty is the mother of ingenuity .
    Ingenuity is one of the characteristics of a beaver.
  • Ingenuousness; honesty, straightforwardness.
  • *, II.17:
  • And therefore I apply my selfe to ingenuitie , and ever to speake truth and what I think.

    See also

    * industriousness