| 词组 | equivocal, ambiguous, ambivalent |
| 释义 | equivocal, ambiguous, ambivalent Following the lead of dictionaries of synonyms (such as Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms) Copperud 1970 and a few other commentators note that ambiguous and equivocal are essentially synonymous but that equivocal may suggest intent to deceive or evade. The word to be stressed here is may. Here are some examples that connote deceit or evasiveness: • ... the dubiety engendered by the equivocal proceedings of James Macpherson —W. L. Renwick, English Literature 1789-1815, 1963 • ... had made powerful enemies within the party by his support for the Munich pact and his equivocal attitude on Suez —Current Biography, September 1964 • ... there was nothing equivocal about him. One was struck at once by his straightforwardness —Jack London, The Sea-Wolf 1904 • ... no pollsters have ever stopped me on the street to tap the fount of my colossal knowledge. They would never get an equivocal answer if they ever asked me —Goodman Ace, Saturday Rev., 22 Jan. 1972 But often equivocal suggests no more than ambiguous: • She is far from a knee-jerk Catholic in her literary responses, equivocal about Greene and Waugh and bored by Bernanos —Mary Gordon, Saturday Rev., 14 Apr. 1979 • ... science in all its aspects is now perceived as irremediably equivocal in its bearing upon human happiness—capable of producing good but also evil — Donald Fleming, Atlantic, September 1970 • For his will is ambiguous, good as well as bad —Paul Tillich, Center Mag., September 1969 • In both studies, results for Negro children were ambiguous —Annual Report, Educational Testing Service, 1966-1967 • ... as murky and ambiguous as the results of the aborted landslide of 1968 —Walter Dean Burnham, Trans-Action, December 1968 • ... such equivocal terms as Socialism and Communism are frequently used with different meanings. • These ambiguities —Francis Conklin, New Scholasticism, October 1953 • ... the more responsible among us assert that these words are ambiguous —Nehemiah Jordan, Themes in Speculative Psychology, 1968 • ... it may be pointed out that the terms general and common are equivocal —John Dewey, Art as Experience, 1934 • In reality, as has been already observed, an aequivo-cal or ambiguous word is not one name, but two names —John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, 1843 Ambivalent may also be used in a sense close to equivocal or ambiguous: • My attitude toward the plan ... will be called by some of my friends ambiguous, or perhaps—since the word is now in fashion—"ambivalent" —Albert Guérard, Education of a Humanist, 1949 More examples are given at ambivalent, ambiguous. |
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