Ambition vs Motive - What's the difference?
ambition | motive | Related terms |
(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.
* Burke
(countable) An object of an ardent desire.
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
To seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to covet.
(obsolete) An idea or communication that makes one want to act, especially from spiritual sources; a divine prompting.
*, III.2.1.ii:
*:there's something in a woman beyond all human delight; a magnetic virtue, a charming quality, an occult and powerful motive .
An incentive to act in a particular way; a reason or emotion that makes one want to do something; anything that prompts a choice of action.
* 1947 , (Malcolm Lowry), Under the Volcano :
(obsolete, rare) A limb or other bodily organ that can move.
(legal) Something which causes someone to want to commit a crime; a reason for criminal behaviour.
* {{quote-book, year=1931, author=
, chapter=10/6, title= (architecture, fine arts) A motif.
(music) A motif; a theme or subject, especially one that is central to the work or often repeated.
To prompt or incite by a motive or motives; to move.
Causing motion; having power to move, or tending to move; as, a motive argument; motive power.
* 1658 , Sir Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus , Folio Society 2007, p. 195:
Relating to motion and/or to its cause
Ambition is a related term of motive.
As a noun ambition
is ambition for some particular achievement.As a verb motive is
.ambition
English
Noun
(en-noun)- My son, John, wants to be a firefighter very much. He has a lot of ambition .
- the pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand more acres
- My ambition is to own a helicopter.
- [I] used no ambition to commend my deeds.
Quotations
(English Citations of "ambition")Verb
(en verb)- Pausanias, ambitioning the sovereignty of Greece, bargains with Xerxes for his daughter in marriage. — Trumbull.
External links
* * ----motive
English
Noun
(en noun)- Many of them at first seemed kind to him, but it turned out their motives were not entirely altruistic.
- (Shakespeare)
- What would his motive be for burning down the cottage?
- No-one could understand why she had hidden the shovel; her motives were obscure at best.
Death Walks in Eastrepps, passage=“Why should Eldridge commit murder?
- If you listen carefully, you can hear the flutes mimicking the cello motive .
Synonyms
* (incentive ) motivation * (creative works ) motifVerb
Synonyms
* motivateAdjective
(-)- In the motive parts of animals may be discovered mutuall proportions; not only in those of Quadrupeds, but in the thigh-bone, legge, foot-bone, and claws of Birds.
