| 释义 |
ambiguity|æmbɪˈgjuːɪtɪ|
Also 5–6 ambyguyte, etc.
[? a. Fr. ambiguïté (16th c. in Littré) ad. med.L. ambiguitāt-em, n. of state f. ambigu-us ambiguous.]
†1. Subjectively: Wavering of opinion; hesitation, doubt, uncertainty, as to one's course. Obs.
c1400Beryn 2577 Dout, pro, contra, and ambiguite. 1426Pol. Poems II. 131 To put away..Holy the doute and the ambyguyté. 1502Arnold Chron. (1811) 10 If deficultye or ambyguyte and dout were vpon ony artycle. c1534tr. Polyd. Verg., Eng. Hist. I. 160 Hee beganne to stande in great ambiguitee of his saftie. c1590Marlowe Faustus i. 78 Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please, Resolve me of all ambiguities?
†2. concr. An uncertainty, a dubiety. Obs.
1598R. Barckley Felic. Man. (1631) 369 Here riseth an ambiguity of no small importance. 1658Bramhall Consecr. Bps. iv. 99 And this was the onely question or ambiguity which was moved.
3. a. Objectively: Capability of being understood in two or more ways; double or dubious signification, ambiguousness.
c1430Lydg. Bochas vi. ii. (1554) 148 a, To auoide al ambiguitie, To declare the summe of mine entent. 1549Compl. Scotl. x. 83 Appollo gaue..ane doutsum ansuere of ambiguite. 1675Baxter Cath. Theol. i. i. 57 The Schoolmens contention whether the Son be freely begotten, and the Holy Ghost freely procceed, ariseth from the ambiguity of the word free. 1768Blackstone Comm. II. 71 The king..took a handle from the ambiguity of this expression to claim them both. 1849Macaulay Hist. Eng. II. 665 To clear the fundamental laws of the realm from ambiguity. 1866Argyll Reign of Law ii. (ed. 4) 99 Confusion of thought arising..out of the ambiguity of language.
b. spec. in Literary Criticism (see quots.).
1930W. Empson Seven Types of Ambiguity i. 1 An ambiguity, in ordinary speech, means something very pronounced, and as a rule witty and deceitful. I propose to use the word in an extended sense, and shall think relevant to my subject any consequence of language, however slight, which adds some nuance to the direct statement of prose. [ed. 3, 1953: I..shall think relevant to my subject any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language.] 1962W. Nowottny Lang. Poets Use vii. 146 The term ‘ambiguity’ now has wide currency as a means of referring to diverse ways in which the language of poetry exhibits a charge of multiple implications and fits itself to contain within the form of discourse aspects of human experience whose difference or distance from one another might seem such as not easily to permit their coherent assembly in linguistic form. Ibid. 172 ‘Ambiguity’ in its current critical sense of the manysidedness of language.
4. concr. A word or phrase susceptible of more than one meaning; an equivocal expression.
1591Horsey Trav. (1857) 207 This Emperowr reduced the ambiguities and uncertanties of their lawes..into a most plain forme. 1668Dryden Evenings Love 56 Give me your hand, and answer me without Ambages or Ambiguities. 1699Bentley Phal. 298 What a wretched Ambiguity would be here..unworthy of so elegant a Poet? 1871W. Markby Elem. Law 415 Those plausible ambiguities which not infrequently occur in English law. |