a. [UN-1 7 and 5 b.] Not ambitious or aspiring; devoid of ambition: a. Of thoughts, occupations, productions, etc.
16[?]. Nobody & Someb., in Simpson, Sch. Shaks. (1878), I. 332. My unambitious thoughts have bin long tird With this great charge.
1656. Cowley, Praise Pindar, iv. Whilst, alas, my tim’erous Muse Unambitious tracks pursues.
1713. Guard., No. 167, ¶ 3. Train them up in the humble unambitious Pursuits of Knowledge.
1768. Boswell, Corsica, Ded. p. v. Predicting greatness to those who afterwards pass their days in unambitious indolence.
1814. Wordsw., Excurs., V. 111. The calm delights Of unambitious piety he chose.
1862. Latham, Channel Isl., III. xviii. (ed. 2), 430. The bottom of this unambitious window … is but four feet from the ground.
1887. Spectator, 25 March, 421/2. He can produce an unambitious though not unsatisfying tiny cabinet picture.
b. Of persons, the mind, etc.
1621. G. Sandys, Ovid’s Met., I. (1626), 3. Then, vnambitious Mortals knew no more, But their owne Countrie’s Nature-bounded shore.
1728. Young, Love Fame, II. 291. Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme; Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
1784. Cowper, Task, IV. 798. An unambitious mind, content in the low vale of life.
1816. Byron, Ch. Har., III. lxiv. Stainless victories, Won by the unambitious heart and hand Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band.
1893. Liddon, Life Pusey, I. App. 455. That unenterprising and unambitious but useful class of the English gentry.
Hence Unambitiously adv., -ness.
1746. Hervey, Medit. (1818), 120. While others, free from all aspiring views, creep unambitiously on the ground, and look like the commonalty of the kind.
a. 1755. Conybeare, Sermons (1757), I. vii. 198. Others, the mean while, through Slowness of Apprehension, or Unambitiousness of Temper, or perhaps several other Defects, being left behind them, are gradually sinking, till they have fixed themselves at length amongst the lowest Part of Mankind.
1791. Coleridge, Math. Problem, iii. 10. Unambitiously join’d in equality’s band.
1814. Wordsw., Excurs., VII. 473. That monumental stone … unambitiously relates How long … The sad privation was by him endured.
1847. Lytton, Lucretia, 19. He felt a lively satisfaction at the thought of leaving his friend honourably, if unambitiously, provided for.
