Definition:
The presence of two or more possible meanings in a single passage. Also, a fallacy in which the same term is used in more than one way. Adjective: ambiguous.
See also:
- Lexical Ambiguity
- Syntactic Ambiguity
- Amphiboly
- Crash Blossom
- Double Entendre
- Equivocation
- Garden-Path Sentence
- Logology
- Polysemy
- Vagueness
Etymology:
From the Latin, "wandering about"Examples and Observations:
- "As I was leaving this morning, I said to myself, 'The last thing you must do is forget your speech.' And, sure enough, as I left the house this morning, the last thing I did was to forget my speech."
(Rowan Atkinson) - I can't tell you how much I enjoyed meeting your husband.
- We saw her duck.
- Roy Rogers: More hay, Trigger?
Trigger: No thanks, Roy, I'm stuffed! - Pentagon Plans Swell Deficit
(newspaper headline) - I can't recommend this book too highly.
- "Leahy Wants FBI to Help Corrupt Iraqi Police Force"
(headline at CNN.com, December 2006) - Prostitutes Appeal to Pope
(newspaper headline) - Union Demands Increased Unemployment
(newspaper headline) - "Thanks for dinner. I’ve never seen potatoes cooked like that before."
(Jonah Baldwin in the film Sleepless in Seattle, 1993) - Because
"Because can be ambiguous. 'I didn't go to the party because Mary was there' may mean that Mary's presence dissuaded me from going or that I went to sample the canapes."
(David Marsh and Amelia Hodsdon, Guardian Style. Guardian Books, 2010) - Pun and Irony
"Quintilian uses amphibolia (III.vi.46) to mean 'ambiguity,' and tells us (Vii.ix.1) that its species are innumerable; among them, presumably, are Pun and Irony."
(Richard Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. Univ. of California Press, 1991)
"An ambiguity, in ordinary speech, means something very pronounced, and as a rule witty or deceitful. I propose to use the word in an extended sense: any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language. . . .
"We call it ambiguous, I think, when we recognize that there could be a puzzle as to what the author meant, in that alternative views might be taken without sheer misreading. If a pun is quite obvious it would not be called ambiguous, because there is no room for puzzling. But if an irony is calculated to deceive a section of its readers, I think it would ordinarily be called ambiguous."
(William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 1947)
Pronunciation: am-big-YOU-it-tee
Also Known As: amphibologia, amphibolia, semantic ambiguity, equivocation
