AMBASSADOR

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ambassador mean? 

• AMBASSADOR (noun)
  The noun AMBASSADOR has 2 senses:

1. a diplomat of the highest rank; accredited as representative from one country to another

2. an informal representative

  Familiarity information: AMBASSADOR used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AMBASSADOR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A diplomat of the highest rank; accredited as representative from one country to another

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

ambassador; embassador

Hypernyms ("ambassador" is a kind of...):

diplomat; diplomatist (an official engaged in international negotiations)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "ambassador"):

ambassadress (a woman ambassador)

Instance hyponyms:

Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko; Andrei Gromyko; Gromyko (Soviet ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations (1909-1989))

Derivation:

ambassadorial (of or relating to or characteristic of ambassadors)

ambassadorship (the post of ambassador)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An informal representative

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Context example:

an ambassador of good will

Hypernyms ("ambassador" is a kind of...):

interpreter; representative; spokesperson; voice (an advocate who represents someone else's policy or purpose)

 Context examples 

And thus ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes, or ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The ambassador remained standing by the sleeper, waited until he stretched his limbs and opened his eyes, and then conveyed to him this proposal.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

There is the French ambassador, there is the Russian, there is whoever might sell it to either of these, and there is Lord Holdhurst.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Your new contacts and friends may include ambassadors, diplomats, others who work in the foreign service or government, university professors, journalists and producers, bureau chiefs from publishing and TV networks, and business people who deal with ideas, communication, and negotiation.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

A negotiation was opened through the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and fro, till, I think, the said Sam's calves must have ached with the exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

There were six ambassadors, with a train of about five hundred persons, and their entry was very magnificent, suitable to the grandeur of their master, and the importance of their business.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to write anecdotes, or secret history; who send so many kings to their graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince and chief minister, where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and cabinets of ambassadors and secretaries of state; and have the perpetual misfortune to be mistaken.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

At last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter, said, “he was desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes, which I had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon that allowance was less answerable for them. That this breed of struldbrugs was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people either in Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the honour to be ambassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both those kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible: and it appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me, that I received it as a thing wholly new, and scarcely to be credited. That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where, during his residence, he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind. That whoever had one foot in the grave was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. That the oldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat. Only in this island of Luggnagg the appetite for living was not so eager, from the continual example of the struldbrugs before their eyes.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed contempt for that of their neighbour; yet our emperor, standing upon the advantage he had got by the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to deliver their credentials, and make their speech, in the Lilliputian tongue.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Accordingly, the next time I had the honour to see our emperor, I desired his general license to wait on the Blefuscudian monarch, which he was pleased to grant me, as I could perceive, in a very cold manner; but could not guess the reason, till I had a whisper from a certain person, that Flimnap and Bolgolam had represented my intercourse with those ambassadors as a mark of disaffection; from which I am sure my heart was wholly free.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)