All 11 Uses of
ambiguous
in
All the King's Men
- And as the admission was made, albeit belatedly and with some ambiguity of inflection, the slight cloud which had gathered upon Mr. Duffy's brow was dissipated with no trace of rancor left behind.†
Chpt 1ambiguity = lack of clarity -- unclear because there could be two or more interpretations
- She was in Skidmore with the Stark party that time because she was attached to the Stark headquarters troop (probably as a kind of spy for Sen-Sen) in some such ambiguous role as secretary.†
Chpt 2
- It was an ambiguous, speculative look.†
Chpt 2
- cocky grin on his fine, clean, boyish face—for it was fine and clean and boyish—while all the hands of Papa's pals pawed at him and beat his shoulders, while Tiny Duffy slapped him on the shoulder, and Sadie Burke, who sat a little outside the general excitement in her own private fog of cigarette smoke and whisky fumes, a not entirely unambiguous expression on her riddled, handsome face, said, "Yeah, Tom, somebody was telling me you played a football game tonight."†
Chpt 5unambiguous = clear (not open to multiple interpretations)standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unambiguous means not and reverses the meaning of ambiguous. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- It was a very ambiguous contract.†
Chpt 5 *
- But it was a very ambiguous contract.†
Chpt 5
- It was so ambiguous that, just as the shooting was about to start, the Attorney General decided that there was no case.†
Chpt 5
- After the Governor had died in the big tester bed with a lot of expensive medical talent leaning over him, Anne Stanton lived in the house fronting the sea, with only the company of Aunt Sophonisba, a feeble, grumbling, garrulous, and incompetent old colored woman, who combined benevolence and a vengeful tyranny in the ambiguous way known only to old colored women who have spent their lives in affectionate service, in prying, wheedling, and chicanery, in shortlived rebelliousness and long irony, and in secondhand clothes.†
Chpt 7
- I gave an ambiguous nod which might have served merely for recognition, a rather chilly and discouraging recognition, or for a signal to follow me out to the hall where we could talk.†
Chpt 10
- She examined me intently, and I could detect a curious shifting and shading of feelings on her face, too evanescent and ambiguous for definition.†
Chpt 10
- There wasn't anything ambiguous now about her face.†
Chpt 10
Definition:
unclear -- because there could be two or more interpretations