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ambivalent
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    Although McCandless was enough of a realist to know that hunting game was an unavoidable component of living off the land, he had always been ambivalent about killing animals.  (source)
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    Soraya was ambivalent at best.  (source)
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    One moment I would be laughing, and the next his jests turned sour in my throat. ... My ambivalence, of course, only encouraged him. Any challenge was a game, and any game a pleasure.  (source)
    ambivalence = mixed feelings
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Show 10 more with 4 word variations
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    I was first hurled into an ambivalent presence many years ago, when a friend's mother died unexpectedly.  (source)
    ambivalent = uncertain (having mixed feelings)
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    I wouldn't tell him. Because as mad as I was, I loved Aspen. And I couldn't bear him being hurt. Then should I leave? The ambivalence pulled at my heart. I could escape Aspen, get away from his face—a face that would torture me every day when I saw it and knew it was no longer mine. But if I left, I'd have to leave Maxon, too.  (source)
    ambivalence = mixed feelings
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    He spent the trip staring ambivalently at the water.  (source)
    ambivalently = with mixed feelings
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    As it unfolds, you may not be so unambivalent, but you're right to want it with a passion.†  (source)
    unambivalent = not with mixed feelings
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unambivalent means not and reverses the meaning of ambivalent. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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    I rolled over to look at her, and her expression seemed ambivalent.†  (source)
    ambivalent = with mixed feelings
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    He studied my face, and perhaps he saw an ambivalence about my own choices.  (source)
    ambivalence = uncertainty
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    Grandmother suffered ambivalent feelings every Fourth of July; she was patriotic enough to stand on her doorstep waving a small American flag—the flag itself was not any larger than the palm of her hand—but at the same time, she frowned upon all the ruckus; she frequently reprimanded the children who rode their bicycles across her lawn, and she shouted at the dogs to stop their fool barking.†  (source)
    ambivalent = with mixed feelings
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    Steve was in his mid-thirties and had a passion and certainty that seemed the direct opposite of my ambivalence.  (source)
    ambivalence = mixed feelings, or uncertainty
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    But by the time we were ten, we'd grown more ambivalent about it.†  (source)
    ambivalent = with mixed feelings
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    Niels Bohr, who, like our own Norwegian poet Vinje, was known for his ambivalence, once said: There are two kinds of truths.  (source)
    ambivalence = uncertainty, or mixed feelings
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