ambition

英文词源

ambition

ambition: [14] Like ambient, ambition comes ultimately from the Latin compound verb ambīre ‘go round’ (formed from the prefix ambi-, as in AMBIDEXTROUS, and the verb īre ‘go’, which also gave English exit, initial, and itinerant). But while ambient, a 16th-century acquisition, remains fairly faithful to the literal meaning of the verb, ambition depends on a more metaphorical use.

It seems that the verb’s nominal derivative, ambitiō, developed connotations of ‘going around soliciting votes’ – ‘canvassing’, in fact – and hence, figuratively, of ‘seeking favour or honour’. When the word was first borrowed into English, via Old French ambition, it had distinctly negative associations of ‘greed for success’ (Reginald Pecock writes of ‘Vices [such] as pride, ambition, vainglory’, The repressor of overmuch blaming of the clergy 1449), but by the 18th century it was a more respectable emotion.
=> exit, initial, itinerant

ambition (n.)

mid-14c., from Middle French ambition or directly from Latin ambitionem (nominative ambitio) "a going around," especially to solicit votes, hence "a striving for favor, courting, flattery; a desire for honor, thirst for popularity," noun of action from past participle stem of ambire "to go around" (see ambient).

Rarely used in the literal sense in English, where it carries the secondary Latin sense of "eager or inordinate desire of honor or preferment." In early use always pejorative, of inordinate or overreaching desire; ambition was grouped with pride and vainglory.