What's the difference between ambition and whim?

Ambition


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of going about to solicit or obtain an office, or any other object of desire; canvassing.
  • (n.) An eager, and sometimes an inordinate, desire for preferment, honor, superiority, power, or the attainment of something.
  • (v. t.) To seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to covet.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Jubilant Democrats are eyeing so-called “red states” such as Georgia and Utah and expanding their ambitions to take both the Senate and House .
  • (2) The award for nonfiction went to New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos for his book on modern China, Age of Ambition .
  • (3) "My great ambition is to be president of a golf club where I am playing," he teased .
  • (4) So far, there is little sign of similar hubris at the Human Brain Project, a far more complex undertaking, but perhaps for the moment Markram's ambition is precisely what is needed.
  • (5) Photograph: KHIZR KHAN This sombre, serene oasis overlooking the Potomac river might also prove the graveyard of Donald Trump’s ambitions for the US presidency.
  • (6) Britain’s troubled relationship with the EU has provided Boris Johnson with nothing but fun since he first made his name lampooning the federalist ambitions of Jacques Delors as the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the early 1990s .
  • (7) President Obama's ambitions for new nuclear reductions?
  • (8) As Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said when he published the initial white paper back in 2010: “At its heart, universal credit has a simple ambition – to make work pay, even for the poorest.
  • (9) "The player [Suárez] is amazing and I love his quality, commitment and ambition to play," said Mourinho.
  • (10) Some … actually dropped to the low end of their ambition ranges, which have led small island states to ask, 'Why is this?'
  • (11) Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of Kenya said the “truth [of the Gospel] continues to be called into question in the Anglican communion” and warned against “the global ambitions of a secular culture”.
  • (12) As important, if not more so, as his ambition to make exams tougher is his hostility towards other measures of ability, such as course work and controlled assessments.
  • (13) And Bristol, I guess, is following on because it has an ambition to become something similar.” According to Key, Bristol’s congestion problems are only as bad as those of other UK cities, and it’s “streets ahead” on walking and cycling .
  • (14) The company recently announced its ambition to reach a valuation of $50bn, but it is unclear how much Uber is worth if it has to start picking up expenses it has up to now pushed on to the shoulders of its drivers.
  • (15) If the ambition set out by the world’s heads of state in New York is ever to be achieved, the global tax system needs more than just a sticking plaster.
  • (16) But concerns about a slowing economy, jobs, civil rights and a lack of progress in the Kurdish peace process appear to have combined with worries that Erdoğan could assume quasi-dictatorial powers to thwart the president’s ambitions.
  • (17) Ian Macfarlane signals frontbench ambition after defecting to Nationals Read more But the deputy leader of the Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, pushed back at the criticism, saying it was not unprecedented for people to move between the Coalition parties and noted it was not as significant as ousting a prime minister.
  • (18) Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN and a former frontrunner to replace Clinton as state secretary, saw her political ambitions cut short after she suggested that the attack could have originated from a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim US-made film.
  • (19) In this context, it is hard not to wonder whether a scheme on the scale and ambition of Packington, located as it is in a sea of valuable central London real estate, could ever be replicated.
  • (20) For Davutoglu, this ambition entails a "comprehensive" approach embracing enhanced economic, cultural and social ties as well as political and security relations.

Whim


Definition:

  • (n.) The European widgeon.
  • (n.) A sudden turn or start of the mind; a temporary eccentricity; a freak; a fancy; a capricious notion; a humor; a caprice.
  • (n.) A large capstan or vertical drum turned by horse power or steam power, for raising ore or water, etc., from mines, or for other purposes; -- called also whim gin, and whimsey.
  • (v. i.) To be subject to, or indulge in, whims; to be whimsical, giddy, or freakish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A group called Campaign for Houston , which led the opposition, described the ordinance as “an attack on the traditional family” designed for “gender-confused men who … can call themselves ‘women’ on a whim”.
  • (2) If we’re going to change the model, we can’t just do it on a whim of government or the people who design these courses.” What he does like about Think Ahead is that participants will be doing “proper social work”, even if, in his view, they will be unprepared for the task.
  • (3) The previous Ba’athist and Shia governments tried to deviate the Muslim generation from their path through their educational programmes that concord with their governments and political whims.
  • (4) Your whims are Benji's command, readers – tell us where to go!
  • (5) Instead it amounts to exploitation, decided at the whim of a Jobcentre Plus adviser."
  • (6) The only thing she wouldn't do was We Shall Overcome, too sacred to perform on a whim she tells me when I meet her later, besides which - and here she giggles - "we probably won't overcome.
  • (7) I’m probably the hardest bandleader to work for, but I do it for love.” His band have rehearsed around 300 songs, from which Prince can choose at whim, which makes playing live more fun that it used to be.
  • (8) But its purchase and use relies on satisfying personal whim, prejudice or educational fashion, not on considerations of educational efficiency.
  • (9) Journalists who work here are not part of the press pack who must always keep one eye looking over their shoulder at their proprietor’s political whims – on business, on taxation or the European Union.
  • (10) If your reforms are a matter of ideology, legacy, whim and faith, then, like many of your predecessors, you could simply say so, and leave "evidence" to people who mean it.
  • (11) During the local election campaign Farage has also jettisoned, seemingly on his whim, longstanding policies such as a flat rate of tax.
  • (12) The very things that give small charities their allure can also be their greatest limitations Having been managed by a founder in three out of my four major jobs, and working closely with one in the fourth, I have lived out all the symptoms: ad-hoc practices with no systems and processes, unilateral decisions at the whim of the founder, a resistance to professionalising and losing the personal touch, and a way of working that revolves entirely around one person because the assumption is that this immortal personality will be around forever.
  • (13) It isn’t a whim of Thea’s not to go back to the classroom.
  • (14) Significant peptide release occurred only when B15 was stimulated at high frequency or at lower frequencies with a relatively long burst duration (Whim and Lloyd, 1989).
  • (15) He has been right too often in this tournament for it to be down to random chance, to the whims of the gods and to be about anything but cold logic, a huge ego and a steely, steely nerve.
  • (16) We see it in the people who have forgotten their encounter with the Lord ... in those who depend completely on their here and now, on their passions, whims and manias, in those who build walls around themselves and become enslaved to the idols that they have built with their own hands.” 7) Being rivals or boastful.
  • (17) That’s before fuel, water, food and tips for the crew, who will cater to the guests’ every whim as the yacht hops from Sardinia to Monaco to Greece or, during the winter, the Caribbean.
  • (18) But while both of us were at their whim, I pointed out that it was he, not security, who had notified Special Branch.
  • (19) Yet the choice of who should be employed as counselors is based on little more than personal whims of decision makers.
  • (20) Martin Donnelly, permanent secretary of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), did not just wake up one morning and, on a whim, write a lengthy and carefully argued defence of the old Whitehall verities.