ambition vs self

ambition

noun
  • 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. 

  • An object of an ardent desire. 

  • 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. 

self

noun
  • Self-interest or personal advantage. 

  • A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated. 

  • An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves). 

  • One individual's personality, character, demeanor, or disposition. 

  • The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts. 

  • A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs). 

  • Identity or personality. 

  • Any molecule, cell, or tissue of an organism's own (belonging to the self), as opposed to a foreign (nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic). 

verb
  • To fertilise by the same strain; to inbreed. 

  • To fertilise by the same individual; to self-fertilise or self-pollinate. 

pron
  • Myself. 

adj
  • Of or relating to any molecule, cell, or tissue of an organism's own (belonging to the self), as opposed to a foreign (nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic). 

  • Having its own or a single nature or character throughout, as in colour, composition, etc., without addition or change; of the same kind; unmixed. 

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