disambiguationn.
/ˌdɪsambɪɡjʊˈeɪʃn/, U.S. /ˌdɪsæmˌbɪɡjəˈweɪʃ(ə)n/ 1. The removal of ambiguity (esp. in language); clarification; differentiation. Also: the result of this; the action or fact of telling things apart; discrimination; interpretation.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > intelligibility > meaning > explanation, exposition > [noun]
keyeOE
undoinga1330
expositiona1340
declarationc1374
declaringc1374
clearingc1380
expoundingc1380
explanationa1382
interpretation1382
exploitingc1390
unfolding1483
explicating1531
explication1537
clearance?1548
elucidation1570
explaining1576
manifestation1576
untwining1577
illustration1581
untwisting1591
eviscerating1599
unclouding1601
enodation1603
opening1611
dilucidation1615
unsnarling1640
declarement1646
enucleation1650
illumination1656
dilucidatinga1660
luciferousness1665
clarifying1677
unravelling1713
disentanglement1751
exegesis1770
disambiguation1827
evisceration1831
keyword1848
clarificationa1866
exponence1880
exponency1880
straightening1900
demystification1964
1827 G. Bentham Outl. New Syst. Logic 88 Disambiguation—where it is to fix the sense of an ambiguous term. This operation has been termed distinction by some Logicians.
a1832 J. Bentham Ess. Logic in Wks. (1843) VIII. 249/1 Disambiguation is distinction applied to words.
1960 Jrnl. Philos. 57 506 The question ‘What do you mean?’..is a request for disambiguation.
1970 Language 46 100 Pairs of sentences can easily be found in which disambiguation rests upon comma intonation alone.
2008 Jerusalem Post (Nexis) 2 May (Features section) 40 The ‘normal’ kamatz..is just called a kamatz, or, when necessary for disambiguation, a kamatz gadol, that is, a ‘big’ kamatz.
2. An instance of the removal of ambiguity (esp. in language). Also: one of the two or more possible meanings or interpretations of an ambiguous term, sentence, etc.
ΚΠ
1963 Language 39 179 Since..practically any item of information about the world is essential to some disambiguations, two conclusions follow.
1988 K. Dahlgren Naive Semantics for Nat. Lang. vii. 158 In order to implement intrasentential disambiguations, the fact that a word had been ambiguous..must be recorded in the system.
2000 Times Lit. Suppl. 23 June 10/4 Feyerbend suggests a striking analogy with quantum mechanics: we should try to see the..ambiguous..term as a superposition rather than mixture of its disambiguations.
2015 Virginia Law Rev. 101 1158 Intellectual historians rarely identify contextual disambiguations, implicatures, implicitures, and presuppositions.
Compounds
General attributive, as disambiguation page, disambiguation program, disambiguation rule, etc.Frequently in the context of computational analysis or processing of natural-language texts.
ΚΠ
1967 Computers & Humanities 2 98 Computerized disambiguation rules for high frequency words in the English language.
1985 Amer. Speech 60 359 Their goal was to design an improved version..by adding more suffixes to its lexicon and also by expanding the capabilities of its context-dependent disambiguation program.
1991 Using Corpora (Proc. Conf. UW Centre for New OED) 3 A disambiguation algorithm that tries to characterize a sense by its context might be aided by the association of a subset of these phrasal entities with each sense of the target noun.
2010 National Post (Canada) (Nexis) 28 Aug. wp11 You'll be taken to a disambiguation page with six Ray Smiths.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2017; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1827