ambiguousam‧big‧u‧ous /æmˈbɪɡjuəs/ ●●○ AWL adjective 
The language in the Minister’s statement is highly ambiguous. His role in the affair is ambiguous.—ambiguously adverb: The legislation had been ambiguously worded.RegisterIn everyday English, people also use the phrase you can take something two ways instead of saying it is ambiguous: What she says is ambiguous. ➔ You can take what she says two ways.
WORD ORIGINambiguous
Origin:
1500-1600 Latin ambiguus, from ambigere ‘to wander around’, from ambi- ( ➔ AMBI-) + agere ‘to drive’EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- an ambiguous question
- McClane's position in the company is ambiguous.
- She left a very ambiguous message on the answerphone last night.
- The document's ambiguous wording makes it very difficult to follow.
- The last part of her letter was deliberately ambiguous.
- The results of the experiments were ambiguous and they will have to be done again.
- Unfortunately the instructions were ambiguous and we didn't know which part of the program to run.
- He liked to keep the story of his life ambiguous.
- In the first place, most of its key concepts are essentially ambiguous.
- Le Touquet's identity today is a little ambiguous but it still has a nice feel about it.
- Like a true oracle, Hailey's pronouncements were both authoritative and ambiguous.
- Mitterrand had ambiguous relations with money, the power of which he regularly lambasted.
- The Labour Party remained in an ambiguous position.
- Where Tudor is economical, organic and disciplined, Stevenson is fussy, distracted and ambiguous.
Longman Language Activatorwhen it is not clear which meaning is intended
having more than one possible meaning, so that it is not clear which meaning is intended: · Unfortunately the instructions were ambiguous and we didn't know which part of the program to run.· She left a very ambiguous message on the answerphone last night.· The results of the experiments were ambiguous and they will have to be done again.
not clear · It is unclear how the man died.· The instructions aren't very clear.· The terms of our tenancy agreement are somewhat unclear.· The reasons for his resignation are still not clear.unclear/not clear about · His ideas are good, but he's very unclear about how he's going to achieve them.unclear/not clear whether/what/why etc · It's not clear why Parks didn't go straight to the police.· It is unclear whether the she will agree to the new arrangements.
having more than one possible meaning and therefore confusing and unclear: · The document's ambiguous wording makes it very difficult to follow.deliberately ambiguous (=intended to be difficult to understand): · The last part of her letter was deliberately ambiguous.
words or statements that are imprecise are unclear because they do not describe or explain something in an exact way when this is necessary: · Many of the terms used in this book are imprecise.· She gave me directions to the hotel, but they were, shall we say, somewhat imprecise.
unclear, especially because not enough details are given: · There have been vague rumours of a coup.vague idea: · I only had a vague idea of where the place was.vague about: · He was rather vague about the reasons why he never finished school.
a confusing situation, story, explanation, etc is difficult to understand because there does not seem to be any clear pattern or order to it: · The kidnappers issued a series of confusing demands.· I found the book really confusing. I kept forgetting who the characters were.· Cricket can be a pretty confusing game for non-players.
if something that someone tells you is muddled or garbled , it is very unclear and confusing because they themselves have not really understood it very well: · I heard a garbled version of the story from one of my students.· Conroy made some muddled statement about how company policy has to be observed in these situations.· The old woman's directions were so garbled that I just rolled up the window and drove on.
unintelligible speech or writing is impossible to understand, for example because the words are not clear or it is written very badly: · Her note was practically unintelligible.· I liked the music but the lyrics were completely unintelligible.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY The legislation had been ambiguously worded.COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
The legislation had been ambiguously worded. (=one that is not clear or is hard to define)· Creativity is an ambiguous concept.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADVERB· It is either tautologous, positively dangerous, unoriginal or highly ambiguous.· The main problem with constructing such a map is that there are circumstances in which the map is highly ambiguous.· But words have a highly ambiguous status: they are human artefacts but they are also very like natural species.
· In this there is a much more ambiguous and open positioning of the subject.· His South Dakota activities are more ambiguous.· The gains to be made in the political sphere are, as Chapter S will show, more ambiguous and contradictory.· Socially, the impact has been more ambiguous.· Over-generation & Syntactic Ambiguity Sentences are much more ambiguous than one would normally expect.· Some verbs are more ambiguous than others.· Human nature and human achievements have come to appear far more ambiguous than the progressive hopes of the nineteenth century admitted.· Another, far more ambiguous and strange way, can be found in Alain Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy.
· As is well known, Marx himself gave a somewhat ambiguous answer; but Poulantzas' reply is quite clear.· For many years teachers had occupied a somewhat ambiguous position.· The excavations revealed somewhat ambiguous structural evidence for a furnace with the discovery of a firing trench.· And its faxed decision seemed somewhat ambiguous.· Government policies have been somewhat ambiguous.
NOUN· I was in an ambiguous position.· For many years teachers had occupied a somewhat ambiguous position.· The Labour Party remained in an ambiguous position.· The critic Greenberg acknowledged the ambiguous position the avant-garde would need to maintain with its patrons.· Feminists are more aware of this ambiguity than psychologists are of their similarly ambiguous position.· Single women and there were many among the repealers-occupied a more ambiguous position.
· Equally, you might use ambiguous words which your superiors treat as a resignation which they will not allow you to retract.· The second manner of semantic variation concerns the activation by different contexts of different senses associated with ambiguous word forms.· The problem is not just one of poor acoustic input but also of ambiguous word boundaries.
WORD FAMILYnounambiguityadjectiveambiguous ≠ unambiguousadverbambiguously ≠ unambiguously
something that is ambiguous is unclear, confusing, or not certain, especially because it can be understood in more than one way OPP unambiguous: The language in the Minister’s statement is highly ambiguous. His role in the affair is ambiguous.—ambiguously adverb: The legislation had been ambiguously worded.RegisterIn everyday English, people also use the phrase you can take something two ways instead of saying it is ambiguous: What she says is ambiguous. ➔ You can take what she says two ways.