| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| ambiguous |
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| SYLLABICATION: | am·big·u·ous |
| PRONUNCIATION: |   m-b g y - s |
| ADJECTIVE: | 1. Open to more than one interpretation: an ambiguous reply. 2. Doubtful or uncertain: “The theatrical status of her frequently derided but constantly revived plays remained ambiguous” (Frank Rich). | | ETYMOLOGY: | From Latin ambiguus, uncertain, from ambigere, to go about : amb-, ambi-, around; see ambi– + agere, to drive; see ag- in Appendix I. | | OTHER FORMS: | am·bigu·ous·ly —ADVERB
am·bigu·ous·ness —NOUN
| | SYNONYMS: | ambiguous, equivocal, obscure, recondite, abstruse, vague, cryptic, enigmatic These adjectives mean lacking clarity of meaning. Ambiguous indicates the presence of two or more possible meanings: Frustrated by ambiguous instructions, I was unable to assemble the toy. Something equivocal is unclear or misleading: “The polling had a complex and equivocal message for potential female candidates” (David S. Broder). Obscure implies lack of clarity of expression: Some say that Kafka's style is obscure and complex. Recondite and abstruse connote the erudite obscurity of the scholar: “some recondite problem in historiography” (Walter Laqueur). The students avoided the professor's abstruse lectures. What is vague is expressed in indefinite form or reflects imprecision of thought: “Vague . . . forms of speech . . . have so long passed for mysteries of science” (John Locke). Cryptic suggests a sometimes deliberately puzzling terseness: The new insurance policy is full of cryptic terms. Something enigmatic is mysterious and puzzling: The biography struggles to make sense of the artist's enigmatic life.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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