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am·big·u·ous

(am-big'yū-ŭs),

1. Having more than one interpretation.

2. In anatomy, wandering; having more than one direction.

3. In neuroanatomy, applied to a nucleus (nucleus ambiguus) supplying special visceral efferent fibers to the vagus and glossopharyngeal nerves.

[L. ambiguus, fr. ambigo, to wander]

ambiguous

[ambig′yo̅o̅·əs]

Etymology: L, ambiguus, to wander

having more than one direction, development, or interpretation or meaning.

ambiguous

adjective Having more than 1 possible meaning; equivocal.

am·big·u·ous

(am-big'yū-ŭs)

1. Having more than one interpretation.

2. In anatomy, wandering; having more than one direction.

3. In neuroanatomy, applied to a nucleus (nucleus ambiguus) supplying special visceral efferent fibers to the vagus and glossopharyngeal nerves.

[L. ambiguus, fr. ambigo, to wander]

References in periodicals archive ?

The ambiguousness of the nature of spatial ability (particularly high ability) has been highlighted by many researchers in the past (for example Barratt, 1953 French, 1965; Just & Carpenter, 1985; Kyllonen, Lohman & Snow, 1984; Kyllonen, Lohman & Woltz, 1984).

The sentence-picture verification task: methodological and theoretical difficulties

She writes that a "nameless ecstacy thrilled through my frame when any new proof occurred that the ambiguousness of my behaviour was the cause" of Pleyel's unhappiness (p.

"All was lonely, darksome, and waste": 'Wieland' and the construction of the new republic

A further indication of Scobie's lingering ambiguousness also can be located in the various roles that he has been assigned by critics.

Penning the police/policing the pen: the case of Graham Greene's 'The Heart of the Matter.'

How literally we are to take this is bound to remain uncertain, given the ambiguousness of poetic imagery.

Whose god's on first? Special providence in the plays of Christopher Marlowe

The ambiguousness of the ending--was Molly responsible for Vivian's death?

Don't tell mother

The classical Latin rapere bears the seed of an ambiguousness that will be fully developed in Old French.

On violations and fragmentation: feminist scholarship and late medieval women's ecstatic spirituality

3) Faults were categorized by seven types: ambiguousness, functional, interface, omission, sequencing, typographical, and inconsistency.

N-fold inspection: a requirements analysis technique

This failure stems ultimately from the ambiguousness of the term Soviet-type economy," which conjures up images of command planning, combined with assorted incentive directed, decentralized economic processes similar to those in force in the Soviet Union.

The Distorted World of Soviet-Type Economies

30) Like New, he prefers the condition of fluidness to that of neat resolution and, like New, he notes the stress, tension and ambiguousness in the post-colonial writer's situation (the terms applied here to culture are clearly drawn from the New Critical understanding of the poem).

Repetitious beginnings: New Zealand literary history in the late 1980s

At the centre of "groupism" and the community development movement to which it gave rise stands a matter of no small ambiguousness.

Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development

of ambiguousness to Marji in the simple black-and-white depiction of her

Graphic ethics: theorizing the face in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

Indeed, what sorts of emotion fit well with the narrative of ambiguousness, hesitation, qualification, and contrariety?