ambition vs quarry

ambition

noun
  • An object of an ardent desire. 

  • Eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or fame; desire to distinguish one's self from other people. 

  • A personal quality similar to motivation, not necessarily tied to a single goal. 

  • A desire, as in (sense 1), for another person to achieve these things. 

verb
  • To seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to covet. 

quarry

noun
  • An object of search or pursuit. 

  • A site for mining stone, limestone, or slate. 

  • An animal, often a bird or mammal, which is hunted. 

  • A diamond-shaped tile or pane, often of glass or stone. 

verb
  • To secure prey; to prey, as a vulture or harpy. 

  • To obtain (or mine) stone by extraction from a quarry. 

  • To extract or slowly obtain by long, tedious searching. 

How often have the words ambition and quarry occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )