Word info Synonyms Antonyms

equivocal

Speech parts

1. equivocal - Noun

2. equivocal - Adjective

3. equivocal - Adjective Satellite

Meaning

(Literally, called equally one thing or the other; hence:) Having two significations equally applicable; capable of double interpretation; of doubtful meaning; ambiguous; uncertain; as, equivocal words; an equivocal sentence.

Capable of being ascribed to different motives, or of signifying opposite feelings, purposes, or characters; deserving to be suspected; as, his actions are equivocal.

Uncertain, as an indication or sign; doubtful.

A word or expression capable of different meanings; an ambiguous term; an equivoque.

Source: Webster's dictionary

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Phrases with the word

Examples

The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always. Jacques Derrida

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect. Thomas Mann

For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live. George Orwell

Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal. Leonard Mlodinow

It has been my fate in a long life of production to be credited chiefly with the equivocal virtue of industry, a quality so excellent in morals, so little satisfactory in art. Margaret Oliphant

...Every single one of us goes through life depending on and bound by our individual knowledge and awareness. And we call it reality. However, both knowledge and awareness are equivocal. One's reality might be another's illusion. We all live inside our own fantasies, don't you think? Masashi Kishimoto

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