Crossword clues for ambiguous
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ambiguous \Am*big"u*ous\, a. [L. ambiguus, fr. ambigere to wander about, waver; amb- + agere to drive.] Doubtful or uncertain, particularly in respect to signification; capable of being understood in either of two or more possible senses; equivocal; as, an ambiguous course; an ambiguous expression.
What have been thy answers? What but dark,
Ambiguous, and with double sense deluding?
--Milton.
Syn: Doubtful; dubious; uncertain; unsettled; indistinct; indeterminate; indefinite. See Equivocal.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1520s, from Latin ambiguus "having double meaning, shifting, changeable, doubtful," adjective derived from ambigere "to dispute about," literally "to wander," from ambi- "about" (see ambi-) + agere "drive, lead, act" (see act). Sir Thomas More (1528) seems to have first used it in English, but ambiguity dates back to c.1400. Related: Ambiguously; ambiguousness.
Wiktionary
a. 1 Open to multiple interpretations. 2 vague and unclear. 3 (context obsolete of persons English) hesitant; uncertain; not taking sides.
WordNet
adj. open to two or more interpretations; or of uncertain nature or significance; or (often) intended to mislead; "an equivocal statement"; "the polling had a complex and equivocal (or ambiguous) message for potential female candidates"; "the officer's equivocal behavior increased the victim's uneasiness"; "popularity is an equivocal crown"; "an equivocal response to an embarrassing question" [syn: equivocal] [ant: unequivocal]
having more than one possible meaning; "ambiguous words"; "frustrated by ambiguous instructions, the parents were unable to assemble the toy" [ant: unambiguous]
having no intrinsic or objective meaning; not organized in conventional patterns; "an ambiguous situation with no frame of reference"; "ambiguous inkblots"
Wikipedia
aka and is a 2003 Japanese Pink film directed by Toshiya Ueno. It was chosen as Best Film of the year at the Pink Grand Prix ceremony.
Usage examples of "ambiguous".
An ambiguous passage of Theophanes persuaded the annalist of the church that death was the immediate consequence of this barbarous execution.
The sidewalk was filled with anorectic individuals of ambiguous gender, hugging guitar cases as if they were life preservers, dragging deeply on cigarettes and regarding the passing traffic with spaced-out apprehension.
He held his deactivated saber one-handed, low in an ambiguous stance, not quite attack ready.
Of course he pumps her for information about Joy Hall, but Mealy remains determinedly ignorant about everything that she finds unimportant -- which is almost everything unconnected with cock -- and when she does impart information, it is usually couched in the most ambiguous terms.
After the second or third ambiguous question, Huron looked up from the playing board with a smile that sent a sudden jolt through her heart.
If he knocks it is usually only to make his presence known to the slave, and the knock is commonly authoritative and rude, often startling her, even though she expects it, signaling her in no unclear or ambiguous fashion that she is to prepare herself, and well, to greet him, her master, which she does then in a position of docility and submission, usually kneeling and head down.
The very concept of a liberatory national sovereignty is ambiguous ifnot completely contradictory.
After assuring her that I no longer entertained any doubt of her innocence, I told her that I thought the behaviour of her friend very ambiguous.
They developed a little gray matter, the neopallium, to deal with the elusive and ambiguous information that smells provide.
And again, there is the desire to compress a telegraphic message into the minimum sixpennyworth, and so send an ambiguous and cryptic sentence, when sevenpence would have made it as clear as light.
Before the end of the siege, an act of blood, ambiguous and indiscreet, sullied the fair fame of Belisarius.
The cloth, Lewisham observed, as he turned towards it, had several undarned holes and discoloured places, and in the centre stood a tarnished cruet which contained mustard, pepper, vinegar, and three ambiguous dried-up bottles.
Every day he picked someone new to represent her, some figure seen at a distance, sexually ambiguous, half-visible in the violent uplight from the concrete.
Several councils were held, confutations were published, excommunications were pronounced, ambiguous explanations were by turns accepted and refused, treaties were concluded and violated, and at length Paul of Samosata was degraded from his episcopal character, by the sentence of seventy or eighty bishops, who assembled for that purpose at Antioch, and who, without consulting the rights of the clergy or people, appointed a successor by their own authority.
This notion of anthropological exodus is still very ambiguous, however, because its methods, hybridization and mutation, are themselves the very methods employed by imperial sovereignty.