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# ambiguous

«ambiguous» in Mova's school dictionary: **having more than one possible meaning, so it is unclear…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

adjective (ambiguous, more ambiguous, most ambiguous)

### meaning for a pupil

1) Ambiguous means having more than one possible meaning, so it is unclear which one is meant. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#m1)

2) Ambiguous can mean uncertain or not clearly decided. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In English lessons ambiguous sentences are a classic puzzle: «I saw the man with the telescope» (who had the telescope?). Clear writing avoids ambiguity with careful word order and commas. In maths, a question is ambiguous if it can be read in two ways, so mathematicians use brackets. Phrases: an ambiguous sentence, an ambiguous answer, ambiguous ending.

### examples

- «Let's eat, Grandma» and «Let's eat Grandma» show how a comma removes ambiguous meaning. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#x1)
- The sign «Slow children» is ambiguous! [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#x2)
- Her answer was ambiguous: I couldn't tell if it was yes or no. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#x3)
- The story has an ambiguous ending, so readers argue about what happened. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#x4)
- Is 6 − 2 + 1 ambiguous? Brackets make it clear. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#x5)
- «I saw her duck» is ambiguous: a bird or a movement? [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#x6)
- The rules of the game were ambiguous, so we argued. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#x7)
- Interpreting this ambiguous reply to signify the third summer, Hyllus controlled his impatience for three years, when, having collected a powerful army, he once more entered the Peloponnesus. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/#x8)

### note

Noun: ambiguity (plural ambiguities). Pronounced am-BIG-yoo-us. Do not confuse with «ambivalent» (having mixed feelings). In maths, 2 + 3 × 4 is NOT ambiguous because of the order of operations: it is 14.

### In the corpora

- [The antecedent is the noun a pronoun points back to; a pronoun is ambiguous when it could point to more than one person.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/5-pronouns-i-me-you-they-and-who/19/)
- ["I saw a man on a hill with a telescope" is ambiguous: the telescope could be yours or the man's.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/11-grammar-puzzles-part-one/12/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «ambiguous» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/ambiguous/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.