ambiguous

Từ điển Oxford Advanced Learner 8th

am·bigu·ous AW BrE [æmˈbɪɡjuəs] NAmE [æmˈbɪɡjuəs] adjective
1. that can be understood in more than one way; having different meanings
•an ambiguous word/term/statement
•Her account was deliberately ambiguous.
2. not clearly stated or defined
•His role has always been ambiguous.
Opp: ↑unambiguous
Derived Word: ↑ambiguously

Word Origin:
[ambiguous ambiguously] early 16th cent. (in the sense ‘indistinct, obscure’): from Latin ambiguus ‘doubtful’ (from ambigere ‘waver, go around’, from ambi- ‘both ways’ + agere ‘to drive’) + ↑-ous.

Example Bank:
•I suspected that he was being deliberately ambiguous.
•The paragraph is rendered ambiguous by the writer's careless use of pronouns.
•‘We’ is a notoriously ambiguous word: does it mean ‘you and I’ or ‘he/she and I’, ‘everyone’ or just ‘some people’?
•It is for the jury to decide what an ambiguous statement was intended to mean.

• Từ trái nghĩa / Antonyms:
  unambiguous, unequivocal, univocal