Type of uncertainty of meaning in which several interpretations are plausible
For other uses, see Ambiguity (disambiguation).
"Ambiguous" redirects here. For the film, see Ambiguous (film).
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Sir John Tenniel's illustration of the Caterpillar for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is noted for its ambiguous central figure, whose head can be viewed as being a human male's face with a pointed nose and chin, or as being the head end of an actual caterpillar, with the first two right "true" legs visible.[1]
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement, or resolution is not explicitly defined, making for several interpretations; others describe it as a concept or statement that has no real reference. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement whose intended meaning cannot be definitively resolved, according to a rule or process with a finite number of steps. (The prefix ambi- reflects the idea of "two", as in "two meanings").
The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with vagueness. In ambiguity, specific and distinct interpretations are permitted (although some may not be immediately obvious), whereas with vague information it is difficult to form any interpretation at the desired level of specificity.
^"And do you see its long nose and chin? At least, they look exactly like a nose and chin, that is don't they? But they really are two of its legs. You know a Caterpillar has got quantities of legs: you can see more of them, further down." Carroll, Lewis. The Nursery "Alice". Dover Publications (1966), p 27.
"two", as in "two meanings"). The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with vagueness. In ambiguity, specific and distinct interpretations are permitted...
Syntactic ambiguity, also known as structural ambiguity, amphiboly, or amphibology, is characterized by the potential for a sentence to yield multiple...
and economics, ambiguity aversion (also known as uncertainty aversion) is a preference for known risks over unknown risks. An ambiguity-averse individual...
(waveforms) s ( t ) {\displaystyle s(t)} have different ambiguity functions, and the ambiguity function is relevant when choosing what pulse to use. The...
of Ambiguity ushered in New Criticism in the United States. The book is a guide to a style of literary criticism practiced by Empson. An ambiguity is...
Inherent Ambiguity of Context-Free Languages" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-09-25. Gross, Maurice (September 1964). "Inherent ambiguity of...
convention, so there is no ambiguity in the semantics of the language, though the use of a parser generator may lead to ambiguous grammars. In these cases...
The ambiguity effect is a cognitive tendency where decision making is affected by a lack of information, or "ambiguity". The effect implies that people...
context of global politics, a policy of deliberate ambiguity (also known as a policy of strategic ambiguity or strategic uncertainty) is the practice by a...
Delphic ambiguity is forecasting which is heavily qualified or subject to misinterpretation—a practice attributed to an oracle of Delphi, who answered...
is crossed. Lexical ambiguity is a subtype of semantic ambiguity where a word or morpheme is ambiguous. When a lexical ambiguity results from a single...
the deliberate use of ambiguous language on a sensitive issue in order to advance some political purpose. Constructive ambiguity is often disparaged as...
Attributional ambiguity is a psychological attribution concept describing the difficulty that members of stigmatized or negatively stereotyped groups...
Ambiguous images or reversible figures are visual forms that create ambiguity by exploiting graphical similarities and other properties of visual system...
A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel is a mathematical fiction by Indian authors Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal. It is a story about finding certainty...
November 1947, as a book. The Ethics of Ambiguity consists of three parts and a short conclusion. "Ambiguity and Freedom," lays out the philosophical...
The serial comma can serve to avoid ambiguity in specific contexts, though its employment may also generate ambiguity under certain circumstances. Usage...
systems produce both ambiguous range measurement and ambiguous radial speed measurement using PRF from 3 kHz to 30 kHz. Ambiguity resolution finds true...
unknown, and ambiguity where relevant information is available but the overall meaning is still unknown. Both uncertainty and ambiguity exist in our culture...
In philosophy, an ethical dilemma, also called an ethical paradox or moral dilemma, is a situation in which two or more conflicting moral imperatives,...
explosion: one of the fundamental laws in logic Syntactic ambiguity, Amphiboly, Amphibology: ambiguity of a sentence by its grammatical structure When a white...
shorthand also includes eleven "ambiguity" characters associated with every possible combination of the four DNA bases. The ambiguity characters were designed...
perhaps none at all. This is called a Gribov ambiguity (named after Vladimir Gribov). Gribov ambiguities lead to a nonperturbative failure of the BRST...
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