underambitious

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

under- +‎ ambitious

Adjective[edit]

underambitious (comparative more underambitious, superlative most underambitious)

  1. Having too little ambition.
    • 2014, Hester Browne, Honeymoon Hotel, →ISBN, page 241:
      A woman—or at least I thought so; she could have been a slightly underambitious transvestite—in a leather miniskirt and bustier top, and the sort of waist-length blond extensions designed for twirling around at the same time as the wearer's nipple tassels.
    • 2016, Mike Wallace, Alison Wray, Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates, →ISBN:
      You risk your work being dismissed as underambitious and so failing to find out anything important.
    • 2016, David Baggett, Jerry L. Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning, →ISBN:
      He is underambitious in his characterization of morality, cashing out prescriptivity in terms of prevailing expectations rather than objective authority, settling for an account of a sense of obligations rather than obligations themselves, and for empathetic behavior rather than empathetic motivations.