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Ambition vs Tenacity - What's the difference?

ambition | tenacity |

As nouns the difference between ambition and tenacity

is that ambition is ambition for some particular achievement while tenacity is the quality or state of being tenacious; as, tenacity, or retentiveness, of memory; tenacity, or persistency, of purpose.

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.

    tenacity

    English

    Noun

    (tenacities)
  • The quality or state of being tenacious; as, tenacity, or retentiveness, of memory; tenacity, or persistency, of purpose.
  • * 2009 , , PHD Comics: Softball: younger and faster
  • — Our opponents may be younger, faster and less out of shape than we are, but we have something they’ll never have!
    — Tenure?
    Tenacity!
  • The quality of bodies which keeps them from parting without considerable force; cohesiveness; the effect of attraction; – as distinguished from brittleness, fragility, mobility, etc.
  • The quality of bodies which makes them adhere to other bodies; adhesiveness; viscosity.
  • The greatest longitudinal stress a substance can bear without tearing asunder, – usually expressed with reference to a unit area of the cross section of the substance, as the number of pounds per square inch, or kilograms per square centimeter, necessary to produce rupture.
  • Synonyms

    * (state of being tenacious) retentiveness, persistency * (quality keeping bodies together) cohesiveness * (quality making bodies adhere) adhesiveness, viscosity

    Antonyms

    * (quality keeping bodies together) brittleness, fragility, mobility