different between ambitious vs challenger

English

Etymology

From Middle English ambitious, from Old French *ambitieus, from Latin ambitiosus, from ambitio; see ambition. Compare with French ambitieux.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /æm?b??.?s/
• Rhymes: -???s

Adjective

ambitious (comparative ambitiouser or more ambitious, superlative ambitiousest or most ambitious)

1. (of a person or their character) Having or showing ambition; wanting a lot of power, honor, respect, superiority, or other distinction.
   • 1891, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Man with the Twisted Lip,"

     As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the country, and eventually married, without anyone having a suspicion as to my real occupation.

2. (followed by "of" or the infinitive) Very desirous
   • 30 June 2019, Sam Wallace in The Telegraph, Manchester United must shape Aaron Wan-Bissaka into a £50m all-rounder - but there is no hiding place at Old Trafford

     Now he is joining a club ambitious to return to a model of dominating games and attacking opposition.

   • 1864, Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods

     We were soon in the midst of the rapids, which were more swift and tumultuous than any we had poled up, and had turned to the side of the stream for the purpose of warping, when the boatmen, who felt some pride in their skill, and were ambitious to do something more than usual

3. Resulting from, characterized by, or indicating, ambition

   Synonyms: showy, aspiring

4. Hard to achieve.

Antonyms

• nonambitious
• unambitious

Derived terms

• ambitiously
• ambitiousness
• overambitious
• underambitious

Related terms

• ambition

Translations

References

• Webster, Noah (1828) , “ambitious”, in An American Dictionary of the English Language
• ambitious in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “ambitious” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "ambitious" in the Wordsmyth Dictionary-Thesaurus (Wordsmyth, 2002)
• "ambitious" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• “ambitious”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.

English

Etymology

From Middle English chalenger; equivalent to challenge +? -er.

Noun

challenger (plural challengers)

1. One who challenges; especially, one who plays against the current champion of a game or contest in hopes of winning and becoming the new champion.

   The champion hopes to defeat his new challenger in the game to remain undefeated.

   One child stood as king of the hill, and tried to withstand the pushes and shoves of his challengers.

   • Debates are often unpredictable, but it is especially hard to game out how this debate featuring a moderate standard-bearer and a liberal challenger will unfold and how people will process it. Hundreds of thousands of viewers, if not millions, will have been personally affected by Sunday, as public gathering spaces are shuttered, schools are closed and on Thursday the stock market plunged by the largest percentage in decades (it snapped back upward on Friday).

Synonyms

• (one who challenges): adversary, combatant, contender, disputer, opponent

Derived terms

• challenger bank

Translations

French

Verb

challenger

1. to challenge

Conjugation

This is a regular -er verb, but the stem is written challenge- before endings that begin with -a- or -o- (to indicate that the -g- is a “soft” /?/ and not a “hard” /?/). This spelling-change occurs in all verbs in -ger, such as neiger and manger.

Further reading

• “challenger” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).