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"
Used in a Sentence
ambiguous
How to use ambiguous in a sentence. Example sentences and definitions for ambiguous.
Editorial note
The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague and ambiguous.
Examples16
Definitions3
Parts of speech1
Quick take
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"
Meaning at a glance
The clearest senses and uses of ambiguous gathered in one view.
having more than one possible meaning; "ambiguous words"; "frustrated by ambiguous instructions, the parents were unable to assemble the toy"
having no intrinsic or objective meaning; not organized in conventional patterns; "an ambiguous situation with no frame of reference"; "ambiguous inkblots"
Definitions
Core meanings and parts of speech for ambiguous.
adjective
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"
See also: equivocal
adjective
having more than one possible meaning; "ambiguous words"; "frustrated by ambiguous instructions, the parents were unable to assemble the toy"
adjective
having no intrinsic or objective meaning; not organized in conventional patterns; "an ambiguous situation with no frame of reference"; "ambiguous inkblots"
Example sentences
The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague and ambiguous.
Price of oil change is ambiguous.- fewer deaths and injuries from accidents, or none at all.
Even if we forbad leniency, there'd still be ambiguous standards.
I am often deliberately ambiguous about the motives of people I dont know well.
This issue is more ethically ambiguous than the EFF acknowledged in their post.
While the legality of port scanning is ambiguous, accessing someone else's network is not.
The driver's license was used to disambiguate ambiguous renewals.
Your comments clearly indicate that you think "direct access" unambiguously means "access to servers that run GMail that the NSA can snoop on any time they like.
Sometimes, text that identifies people directly can be ambiguous and can even be interpreted as an insult.
Bioinformatics and evolution research have shown "life" to be much more ambiguous and mysterious than we could have ever imaged.
"dmv" is a nice example where it's works brilliantly, but those ambiguous queries are pretty rare, and hence the more bread and butter stuff is still really driving most of the quality.
But they may be actually ambiguous in the future - in the case where a unary prefix operator becomes a binary operator.
If the spec is ambiguous then it's possible for two different implementors two come up with incompatible implementations, which kinda ruins the point of a spec.
Javascript does automatic semicolon insertion by taking advantage of potentially ambiguous constructs that happen to be resolved in one way right now.
Language extension usually works this way: a previously unambiguously wrong statement is made valid; but JS semicolon insertion often turns "wrong" statements into "correct" statements, so it leaves less "entropy" to be taken advantage of when increasing the power of the syntax.
This is the sort of person that I want to be engaged with:* highly opinionated* driven by personal interest* not afraid to go down the worm hole and come up with little public recognition and enormous personal gainThis is the sort of project that makes me grin:* highly engrossing project page* mysterious motivations* unknown implications* legally ambiguousI love this shit.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.
How do you use ambiguous in a sentence?
The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague and ambiguous.
What does ambiguous mean?
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"
What part of speech is ambiguous?
ambiguous is commonly used as adjective.