Other forms: ambiguities
Ambiguity is what you have when something can be read in more than one way and nothing tells you which reading is meant. A headline like Police help dog bite victim; a reference that says I cannot recommend him enough.
The adjective is ambiguous, the adverb ambiguously. You can count it — there are three ambiguities in clause four — or leave it uncountable, as in the ambiguity of the ending. Ambiguity is not the same as vagueness, and the difference is worth holding on to: an ambiguous sentence hands you two clear meanings, a vague one hands you none. Writers and diplomats sometimes want it, and a treaty line is left ambiguous on purpose so that both sides can sign. Tolerance for ambiguity is the phrase people reach for when a situation refuses to resolve and you have to live in it anyway.
1nounambiguityThe quality of having more than one possible meaning.~58%
“The ambiguity of the wording cost the company the case.”
2nounlogicA particular word, phrase or detail that can be read in more than one way.~16%
“The lawyer marked every ambiguity in the draft in red.”
3nounstateA state of affairs in which nothing has been made clear either way.~26%
“Six weeks of ambiguity followed, with no decision from head office.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Ambiguity reached English as ambiguite in Middle English, taken from Old French, which had it from Latin ambiguitas. In shape it is nothing more than the adjective ambiguous with -ity on the end, the ending that turns a description into the quality itself, the way pure becomes purity.
Latin
ambiguitās
Old French
ambiguite
Middle English
ambiguite
English, today
ambiguity
From Middle English ambiguite, from Old French ambiguite, from Latin ambiguitās. From Middle English ambiguite, from Old French ambiguite (French ambiguïté), from Latin ambiguitas, equivalent to ambiguous + ity.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA