ambiguity

ambiguity (am-bi-GYOO-i-tee) noun 1. Doubtfulness or uncertainty as regards interpretation. 2. Something of doubtful meaning.[From Latin ambiguus, uncertain, from ambigere, to go about : ambi-, around +agere, to drive.]


AMBIGUITY Ambiguity is one of a handful of English words whose meaningdescribes itself. In other words, "Ambiguity" is ambiguous. It refers, onthe one hand, to a situation of imprecision, of obscurity, because morethan one interpretation is possible. On the other hand, something ambiguous can be understood perfectly well - but from more than one point of view. We are amused at the fable of the elephant and the six blind men,each of whom understood the elephant to be a very different animal. But weseem to lose that good-natured perspective just in time to assume that ourown point of view on the world is more accurate than that of many of theother human beings on the planet. We avoid ambiguity as much as possible,feeling threatened that it may expose our own point of view as merely anoption. But we should embrace ambiguity. After all, each of our eyes sees aslightly different, two-dimensional, view of reality. Those two images aresynthesized by the brain into a single three-dimensional image, which wethink of as "more real" than a 2-D view. The more points of view we are ableto see, the more clearly we understand the world around us. Reality isambiguous. Ambiguity is synthesis. I like to think that looking at everything - not only words -from alternate points of view, can enhance our understanding of the worldaround us.


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