Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having a grammatical structure that allows of two interpretations; equivocal.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Ambiguous; equivocal: now used only in logic as applied to a sentence susceptible of two meanings.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Ambiguous; doubtful.
- adj. (Logic) Capable of two meanings.
Etymologies
- Latin amphibolus, Ancient Greek thrown about, doubtful. See amphibole. (Wiktionary)
- From Late Latin amphibolus; see amphibole. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“What more contemptible could the Pagans of old have spoken of their dunghill deities, with their amphibolous [i.e., ambiguous] oracles?”
The Doctrine of the Saints��� Perseverance Explained and Confirmed
“He spoke of him afterwards as “that amphibolous being sitting calmly and unmoved on the throne of amphibology, while he cheats and deludes us by his double meaning, covert phraseology, and claps his hands when he sees us involved in his insidious figures of speech, as a spider rejoices over a captured fly.””
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘amphibolous’.
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[Open] Correctly-spelled words that l...
Thanks to everyone who added to this list. (I moved it to a new URL, so all the words added on the first day are credited to me—sorry about that.)
(Here’s the original list with a slo...orignal, refect, collum, lightening, manakin, neumatic, mutch, miosis, radicle, tryptic, kyack, apatite and 119 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Metaflip
Blasted binaries, background pattern inversions, and subtlety awareness.
apophenia, fissiparous, doppelganger, intertextuality, presque vu, unsung, dittology, enantiodromia, pareidolia, silhouette, rorschach, galanty and 151 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for amphibolous.
fbharjo These get thrown around - tossed back-and-forth!!- with undertows Aug 29, 2011
ruzuzu The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose. Aug 29, 2011
whichbe Capable of two meanings. Jun 4, 2008