"Ambiguity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But ambiguity in the use of the term 'force' makes itself more and more felt as we proceed. We have called the attraction of gravity a force, without any reference to motion. A body resting on a shelf is as much pulled by gravity as when, after having been pushed off the shelf, it ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the truth of the miracles and prophecy. Yet this is what those do, who adduce the excellence of the precepts and spirituality of the general doctrine of the New Testament, as the "moral evidence" of its miracles and of its fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. But for the ambiguity of the word doctrine, probably such confusion of thought would have been impossible. "Doctrines" are either spiritual truths, or are statements of external history. Of the former we may have an inward witness;—that is their proper evidence;—but the latter must depend upon adequate testimony ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers. Surely there must have been God's intent in the making of this new-world Republic. Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation supreme, and its concord inspiring. We have seen the world rivet its hopeful gaze on the great truths on which the founders wrought. We have seen civil, human, and religious liberty ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... for the better understanding of which, I will make a brief digression of the nature of spirits. And although the question be very obscure, according to [1118]Postellus, "full of controversy and ambiguity," beyond the reach of human capacity, fateor excedere vires intentionis meae, saith [1119]Austin, I confess I am not able to understand it, finitum de infinito non potest statuere, we can sooner determine with Tully, de nat. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... special source of ambiguity in the catchword used by the revolutionary school. They spoke of a return to nature. What, to ask once more a very troublesome question, is meant by nature? Does it mean inanimate nature? If so, is a love of nature clearly good or 'natural?' Was Wordsworth ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... used in this book. Strictly speaking, however, any trait which appears in a child at birth might be called inborn, and some writers, particularly medical men, thus refer to traits acquired in prenatal life. Because of this ambiguity the word should be carefully defined when used, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared on the preceding day; and, finally, that man appeared upon the earth, and the emergence of the universe from chaos was finished. Milton tells us, without the least ambiguity, what a spectator of these marvellous occurrences would have witnessed. I doubt not that his poem is familiar to all of you, but I should like to recall one passage to your minds, in order that I may be justified in what I have said regarding ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... pick up," [Ch] "stone," [Ch] "generation," [Ch] "to eat," [Ch] "a house," [Ch] "a clan," [Ch] "beginning," [Ch] "to let go," [Ch] "to test," [Ch] "affair," [Ch] "power," [Ch] "officer," [Ch] "to swear," [Ch] "to pass away," [Ch] "to happen." It would be manifestly impossible to speak without ambiguity, or indeed to make oneself intelligible at all, unless there were some means of supplementing this deficiency of sounds. As a matter of fact, several devices are employed through the combination of which confusion is avoided. One ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the jury looked down from the awful circle, in the midst of which stood Saunders, and surveyed the little hard-faced, yellow-haired farmer, with eyes which seemed intent on searching him through all his shadowy ambiguity. If only he would make such answer as any other man in all the land might expect,—thought the prisoner,—"Why, your wife, of course." The doctor was prepared to believe in a miracle. Since he went away his wife might have been spurred on by the ambition to rival her daughter, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... The ambiguity and unsatisfactory vagueness in what I have been attempting to indicate may perhaps be in a measure dissipated by a direct appeal to concrete experience. When one analyses this emotion of love in relation to any actual ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... mean the speed of a star in space, but its angular motion as he observes it on the celestial sphere. A star moving forward with a given speed will have a greater proper motion according as it is nearer to us. To avoid all ambiguity, we shall use the term "speed" to express the velocity in miles per second with which such a body moves through space, and the term "proper motion" to express the apparent angular motion which the astronomer measures ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... a small ambiguity in the term "experience," and in the phrases, "contrary to experience," or "contradicting experience," which it may be necessary to remove in the first place. Strictly speaking, the narrative of a fact is then only contrary to experience, when the fact is related to have existed at a time and ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... anxiety by offering them arms and money, styling them with ill-timed respect 'Conscript Fathers'. A 53 remarkable quarrel arose at this meeting. Licinius Caecina attacked Eprius Marcellus[331] for the ambiguity of his language. Not that the others disclosed their sentiments, but Caecina, who was still a nobody, recently raised to the senate, sought to distinguish himself by quarrelling with some one of importance, and selected Marcellus, because the memory of his career as ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... dearest and readiest, if not the most just, criterion of a man's services, is the wage that mankind pays him or, briefly, what he earns. There at least there can be no ambiguity. St. Paul is fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a tentmaker, and Socrates fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a sculptor, although the true business of each was not only something different, but something which remained unpaid. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The Hebraism [Greek: meta salpingos phones megales] (St. Matt. xxiv. 31) presents an uncongenial ambiguity to Western readers, as our own incorrect A. V. sufficiently shews. Two methods of escape from the difficulty suggested themselves to the ancients:—(a) Since 'a trumpet of great sound' means nothing else but 'a loud trumpet,' and since this can be as well expressed by [Greek: salpingos megales], ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... influence of this divine power, the Daemonion, as he calls it. He shows how the Deity visits the sins of the ancestors upon their descendants, how man rushes, as it were, wilfully upon his own destruction, and how oracles mislead by their ambiguity, when interpreted by blind passion. He shows his awe of the divine Nemesis by his moderation and the firmness with which he keeps down the ebullitions of national pride. He points out traits of greatness of character ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... alarming the others and announcing to Paredes and Doctor Groom his unlawful presence in the room. During the moment that the shock held him, silent, motionless, bent in the darkness above the bed, he understood there could have been no ambiguity about his ghastly and loathsome experience. The dead detective had altered his position as Silas Blackburn had done, and this time someone had been in the room and suffered the appalling change. Bobby's fingers still responded to the charnel feeling of cold, inactive flesh suddenly ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... your happiness. I affect not reserves which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation when I have decided. I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded. The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity. I shall not, however, multiply professions on this head. My motives must remain in the depository of my own breast. My arguments will be open to all, and may be judged of by all. They shall at least be offered in a spirit which will not disgrace the cause of ...
— The Federalist Papers
... and sinful desires, far from being the sign of liberty, are the bit and bridle that hinder its fiery course toward God. The same thought, less vividly put, is found in a modern theologian—Dr. Moberly. "The real consummation of either moral or immoral character," he writes, "would exclude the ambiguity which was offered as the criterion of free will.... Full power to sin is not the key to freedom. On the contrary, all inherent power to do wrong is a direct infringement of the reality of free-will.... Free- will is not the ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... note on this passage Byron says: "As it is necessary in these times to avoid ambiguity, I say that I mean by 'Diviner still' Christ. If ever God was man—or man God—He was both. I never arraigned His creed, but the use or abuse of it. Mr. Canning one day quoted Christianity to sanction slavery, and Mr. Wilberforce had little to say in reply. And was Christ crucified that black men ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... it. No serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it as culture at all. To find the real ground for the very different estimate which serious people will set upon culture we must find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a motive the word ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... talent, exhibited in their execution. For example, here is a sailor depicted with a most lugubrious and "I-wish-I-might-get-it" expression on his rather florid face, looking into an empty grog-tub; and that there may be no ambiguity about the matter, the word empty is printed on the tub, and attached to his mouth a balloon-shaped sack containing the following visible speech—"Three years on the 'Alert' but no 'Discovery.'" A second tar is represented ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... saw no ambiguity. "That is easily said. You are a priest, I am a worldling; what to you would mean but little, to me would be the rending of the core of life. My father can not undo what he has done; he can not piece together and make whole the wreck he has ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the nature of Pe-lung's reflection was clouded in ambiguity, though the fact that he became entirely enveloped in a dense purple vapour indicated feelings of more than usual vigour. When this cleared away it left his outer form unchanged indeed, but the affable condescension of his manner was merged into one ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... was the transferred instruction. The cabman, quick to note the ambiguity in the direction given, prepared, with the subtlety of his kind, for ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... from the Author of nature, sobriety, dignity, and conclusiveness may fairly be required; but when a man ascribes his extraordinary power to his knowledge of some merely human secret, impropriety does but evidence his own want of taste, and ambiguity his want of skill. We have no longer a right to expect a great end, worthy means, or a frugal and judicious application of the miraculous gift. Now, Apollonius claimed nothing beyond a fuller insight into nature than others had; a knowledge of the fated and immutable laws to which it is conformed, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... but wot I'd work my 'ead orf to please any gentleman that is a gentleman; and when you've eaten one of my dinners, sir, you won't want nobody else to cook and do for you no more." And though Ted had pointed out to her the sinister ambiguity of this formula, she had ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... cap at him encouragingly. It was evident that there was an understanding between them. Lady Enid began to wonder what was its nature. The Prophet seemed rather disconcerted at the reception given to his not wholly artless ambiguity. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... representing that you struck at the root of morality in a principle laid down in your book of Ideas—and that I took you for a Hobbist!"[43] The difference of opinion between Locke and Reid is in consequence of an ambiguity in the word principle, as employed by Reid. The removal of a solitary word may cast a luminous ray over a whole body of philosophy: "If we had called the infinite the indefinite," says Condillac, in his Traite ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... star came out, and then another; there were no hard suggestions, no sordid reminders. It was a beautiful world, filled with happy people, united in a common healthy interest; the outlines of separation were softened into ambiguity and the differences veiled by ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... the very simplicity of this book will encourage careless criticism from those who believe that genius and ambiguity are twin. ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... was a man of method and despatch, clear-headed and singularly free from prejudice, ambiguity, or hesitation. He was honest and frank in council, as he was gallant on the quarter-deck. The Intendant was not a whit behind him in point of ability and knowledge of the political affairs of the colony, and surpassed him in influence at the court of Louis XV., but less ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... perplexed before, to watch that boy now was more curious than ever. He drew back from me with a show of wounded dignity, then bit his lips, and sighed, and stared, and frowned. "Come," I said laughingly, "speak! it engenders ambiguity to be so ambiguous of gender! 'Tis no great matter, yes or no, a plain answer will set us fairly in our friendship; if it is comrade, then comrade let it be; if maid, why, I shall not quarrel with that, though it cost me ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... miraculous draught of fishes, the draught of a ship, the draft of a picture, or a draught of medicine, or the present draft of this essay, though it may ultimately appear medicinal, are, some of them, quite as distinct objects or notions as, for instance, vane and vein are: but the ambiguity of draft, however spelt, is due to its being the name of anything that is drawn; and since there are many ways of drawing things, and different things are drawn in different ways, the same word has come to carry very ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... to philosophy. An ultimate datum, even though it be logically unrationalized, will, if its quality is such as to define expectancy, be peacefully accepted by the mind; while if it leave the least opportunity for ambiguity in the future, it will to that extent cause mental uneasiness if not distress. Now, in the ultimate explanations of the universe which the craving for rationality has elicited from the human mind, the demands of expectancy to be satisfied have always played a fundamental part. {80} The term ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... to mass, sees Puyguilhem, and passes without saying anything to him. Puyguilhem, much astonished, waits all the rest of the day, and seeing that the promised declaration does not come, speaks of it to the King at night. The King replies to him that it cannot be yet, and that he will see; the ambiguity of the response, and the cold tone, alarm Puyguilhem; he is in favour with the ladies, and speaks the jargon of gallantry; he goes to Madame de Montespan, to whom he states his disquietude, and conjures her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... national citizenship, which we freely extend to the African. We are thus left in the ridiculous situation of providing that nobody may be a citizen of our great Republic except a white Caucasian and a black African, with considerable ambiguity still as to what the word "white" means. The American Indians are, indeed, admitted under the conditions before mentioned, so that as a catch-word the reader may remember that we are a red, white, and black country, but not a ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... earnestness, he determined to give her no cause for this, and treated Madge much as he did Mrs. Muir, allowing for difference in age and relation. He determined that Miss Wildmere should discover no ambiguity in his course or intentions. If thoughts of him had kept her waiting through years, he would justify those thoughts by all the means in his power. Casting about with a lover's ingenuity for an explanation of her tantalizing allurement, yet elusiveness, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... duty this evening is to ask your pardon for the ambiguity of title under which the subject of lecture has been announced: for indeed I am not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to contain wealth; but of quite another order of royalty, and ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... happened that any two of us, in writing down the fame word, from the same mouth, made use of the same vowels in representing it. Nay, we even, very commonly, differed about consonants, the sounds of which are least liable to ambiguity. Besides all this, we found, by experience, that we had been led into strange corruptions of some of the most common words, either from the natives endeavouring to imitate us, or from our having misunderstood ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... your theory is excellent, though your practice does not quite conform; your oracles are crooked and enigmatic, and generally rely upon a safe ambiguity; a second prophet is required to say what they mean. But what is your solution of the problem? How are we to cure Timocles of the impediment in ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... memorials had been presented to congress, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and for the abolition of the slave trade between the states of the Union. This was enough. The vindictive bitterness, the marked caution, the studied reverse, and the cumbrous ambiguity, practiced by our white folks, when alluding to this subject, was now fully explained. Ever, after that, when I heard the words "abolition," or "abolition movement," mentioned, I felt the matter one of a personal concern; and I drew near to listen, when I could do so, without seeming ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... ambiguity indicated above, different people with different interests, all of them good patriotic Americans, draw very different inferences from the doctrine of equal rights. The man of conservative ideas and interests means by the rights, which are to be equally ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... numerical majority. It is evident that the only check upon their ill-doing lies in the certainty of their disagreement as to the particular kind of confusion which they may think it expedient to create. Some will wish to accomplish their common object by one kind of verbal ambiguity, some by another; some by laws clearly enough (to them) unconstitutional, others by contradictory statutes, or statutes secretly repealing wholesome ones already existing. A clear, simple and just code would deprive them of their means ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... eloquent eulogium upon the other crowned one—upon Ariosto—which has for its object as well to dash the pride of the living, as to do homage to the dead. He adds, with a most cruel ambiguity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... king, speech ought always to be free from the nine verbal faults and the nine faults of judgment. It should also, while setting forth the meaning with perspicuity, be possessed of the eighteen well-known merits.[1688] Ambiguity, ascertainment of the faults and merits of premises and conclusions, weighing the relative strength or weakness of those faults and merits, establishment of the conclusion, and the element of persuasiveness or otherwise that attaches to the conclusion thus arrived ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the income in the Funds. When that stands in my name, you and I have an equal interest in marrying each other. There it all is, my beautiful aunt, as plain as day. Between you and me there must be no ambiguity. I can marry my aunt at the end of a year's widowhood; but I could not marry a ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... is what one most usually finds and uses. Sentences will sometimes be useful because they may contain the name of the event, and they sometimes offer a wider range for selection of the needed consonants; but care must be taken to avoid ambiguity. To indicate the birth of Lincoln, we might use this formula: (1) {D}awn (8) o{f} (0) A{s}sassinated (9) {P}resident, but as Garfield was also assassinated, the formula in its meaning would equally apply ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... up money on their bills or notes payable on demand. In the year 1821 the act was so far modified as to permit the establishment of banking companies exceeding six in number at a distance of 50 m. from Dublin. In 1824, in consequence of the ambiguity of that act, an act had to be passed to explain it. It was not till 1845 that the restriction as to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... own cause, and obtaining forgiveness for his indiscretion. He did not judge it safe to go into any detail concerning the circumstances by which he had been misled, and upon the whole endeavoured to express himself with such ambiguity, that if the letter should fall into wrong hands, it would be difficult either to understand its real purport, or to trace the writer. This letter the old man undertook faithfully to deliver to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... others contended that the Covenant of the League of Nations was a "muddy, murky, and muddled document," so Mr. Williams of New York, in 1788, charged "ambiguity" against the proposed Constitution, saying that it was "absolutely impossible to know what we give up and ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... must remember that this was no source of ambiguity to the Yucatecs, however much it may be to us. Each one of them, and specially each officiating priest, was entirely familiar with every attribute of every god of the Yucatec pantheon. The sign of the attribute brought the idea of the power of the god in that ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... beyond all conditions of matter imaginable by us, but pure Spirit is at present as inconceivable by us as pure matter. And as in dealing with possible "communications" we have average human beings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit as much as possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the word often occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and it then denotes ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... of its ambiguity of sex and in spite of its irregular metre, I find, with Mr. Ellwanger, more force of poetry in Hood's ode than in Keats's; and this in spite of one's prejudice in favour of the greater poet. It came on me with a small shock therefore ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the craft, that every mass (be it body or leaf) must be made as complete in itself as the circumstances will allow; but, if partly hidden, the concealment should be wilful, and without ambiguity. Thus, a dog's head may be rightly carved as being partly hidden in a bucket, but ought not to be covered by another head if it is ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... specimen is the bit of evidence read by the White Rabbit at the Trial of the Knave of Hearts.[1] One charm of these verses is the serious air of legal directness which pervades their ambiguity, and another is the precision with which the metrical accent coincides exactly with the natural emphasis. They are marked, too, by the liquid euphony that always distinguishes ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... proper degree of good affections and of solicitude for the public good is morally evil. He then discusses the bearing of ignorance and error, vincible and invincible, and specially the case wherein an erroneous conscience extenuates. The difficulty of such cases, he says, are due to ambiguity, wherefore he distinguishes three meanings of Conscience that are found, (1) the moral faculty, (2) the judgment of the understanding about the springs and effects of actions, upon which the moral sense approves or condemns them, (3) our judgments concerning actions compared with the law (moral ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... more so because the poetry we have grown accustomed to, in our generation, is so different from this; so mystical and subjective, so remote from the crowd, so dim with the trailing mists of fanciful ambiguity. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... would assuredly weaken the Government quite as much as the Legislature. The Executive, as the organ of the Federal Union, would be hampered by new conditions utterly unknown to an English Ministry. The language of Federalists exhibits a curious and ominous silence or ambiguity as to the disposal of the armed forces. Is the army to be a British army, with authority at the will of the Federal Government to enter every part of the new Union, or is Ireland to have an independent force of her own? This, again—and every specific criticism ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... there is no risk of ambiguity, the breve is shown as the letter u; elsewhere it is shown in ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... notable service. The following is worthy of notice:—The cavaliers during Cromwell's usurpation, usually put a crumb of bread into a glass of wine, and before they drank it, would exclaim with cautious ambiguity, "God send this Crum well down!" A royalist divine also, during the Protectorate, did not scruple to quibble in the following prayer, which he was accustomed to deliver:—"O Lord, who hast put a sword into the hand of thy servant, Oliver, put it into his heart ALSO—to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... after another, gaining knowledge of what was going on, the company strayed in from without, and, each in turn hazarding a number, received in answer the rhyme or stanza indicated; and who shall say how long those chance-directed words, chosen for the most part with the elastic ambiguity of all oracles of any established authority, lingered echoing in the heads and hearts of them to whom they were given—shaping and confirming, or darkening with their denial many an ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... thought. These causes are not removable by definite rules, and therefore, though not neglected, are not prominently considered in this book. My object rather is to point out some few continually recurring causes of ambiguity, and to suggest definite remedies in each case. Speeches in Parliament, newspaper narratives and articles, and, above all, resolutions at public meetings, furnish abundant instances of obscurity arising from the monotonous neglect of ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... to the people was isolated from all others with a completeness scarcely ever practicable—a circumstance which rendered the "mandate" to Parliament to maintain the legislative union exceptionally free from ambiguity. The party which had brought forward the defeated proposal, although led by a statesman of unrivalled popularity, authority, and power, was shattered in the attempt to carry it, and lost the support of numbers of its most conspicuous adherents, including Chamberlain, Hartington, Goschen, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... much for freedom, and what loyalty to either principle involved. It was the distinction of Lincoln—a man lacking in much of the knowledge which statesmen are supposed to possess, and capable of blundering and hesitation about details—first, that upon questions like these he was free from ambiguity of thought or faltering of will, and further, that upon his difficult path, amid bewildering and terrifying circumstances, he was able to take with him the minds of very many very ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... memory fails me, and I positively cannot recollect whether his hero was sliding or walking; as though a writer should describe a skirmish, and the reader, at the end, be still uncertain whether it were a charge of cavalry or a slow and stubborn advance of foot. There could be no such ambiguity in Burns; his work is at the opposite pole from such indefinite and stammering performances; and a whole lifetime passed in the study of Shenstone would only lead a man further and further from writing the "Address to a Louse." Yet Burns, like most great artists, proceeded from a school and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so far as to write out the entire theory of harmonics. I learnt to express myself in the barbaric language of music, to speak of minor scales in fifths, to understand what was meant by enharmonic ambiguity. I studied voice modulation, permissible and non- permissible octaves; but I did not find what I hoped. I composed a few short tunes, which I myself thought very pretty, but which my young master made great ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... they. And thereupon changed rear to front, as at Zorndorf, but more elaborately;—which I should not mention, were it not that hereby their late "right wing on the Muhlberg" has, in strict speech, become their "left," and there is ambiguity and discrepancy in some of the Books, should any poor reader take to studying them on this matter. Changed their front; which involves much interior changing; readjusting of batteries and the like. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... soul, however, she decided that politics were as bad as mathematics, and that the mission of politicians seemed to be calling each other names, but she kept these feminine ideas to herself, and when John paused, shook her head and said with what she thought diplomatic ambiguity, "Well, I really don't see what we are ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... discussion of the tariff question, Mr. Bigelow assumes it as a settled principle of national policy that revenue should be raised by duties on imports. To clear the ground from ambiguity, he states exactly what he means when he uses the terms "free-trade" and "protection," and then proceeds to describe and explain the tariff-policy of Great Britain. Not without good reason does he give this prominence to the action of that great power. It is not merely that England stands at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... add to her embarrassment, but to clear up the ambiguity, which he perceived the next moment he had better have left alone, he went on: 'He tells me it's now ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... His ambiguity was beginning to exasperate me, and I felt myself shut out from some knowledge to which I had as good ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... amicable adjustment of the difficulties between the colonies and the mother country. General Clinton was ready to begin negotiations after the advice and under the conditions proposed by General Arnold, which might be interchanged by means of a correspondence maintained with a certain ambiguity. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... however, might fairly argue that this very ambiguity was greatly in favour of his doctrine, since if languages had all been constantly undergoing transmutation, there ought often to be a want of real lines of demarcation between them. He might, however, propose ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... the edge of White Oak Swamp, Richard Cleave considered the order he had received. He found an ambiguity in the wording, a choice of constructions. He half turned to send the courier again to Winder, to make absolutely sure that the construction which he strongly preferred was correct. As he did so, though he could not see the brigade beyond the belt of trees, he heard it in motion, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the slightest ambiguity about my position in the matter; in fact, if you will turn to one paper on the School Board written by me before my election in 1870, I think you will find that I anticipated the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... administration, however, had fallen off enormously in popularity, and the obstacles imposed by the fiscal cleavage appeared insuperable. Unable wholly to follow Mr. Chamberlain in his projects, the premier had grown weary of the attempt to balance himself on the tight rope of ambiguity between the free trade and protectionist wings of his party. Not caring, however, to give his opponents the advantage which would accrue from an immediate dissolution of Parliament and the ordering ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... happened that our luckless crowned philosopher has been the common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite obvious when so many causes were operating against him. The shifting positions into which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will unriddle the enigma of his life. Contrarieties cease to be contradictions when operated on ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... lapsed into ambiguity. "I think," he said, "it is possible to conceive such circumstances, and so, probably, will you if you think ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... sometimes distinguished as "hard" and "soft" determinism. The controversy between determinism and libertarianism hinges largely on the significance of the word "motive"; indeed in no other philosophical controversy has so much difficulty been caused by purely verbal disputation and ambiguity of expression. How far, and in what sense, can action which is determined by motives be said to be free? For a long time the advocates of free-will, in their eagerness to preserve moral responsibility, went so far as to deny ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale: sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound: sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression; sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... a similar character may, and probably will, be made by our naval forces, and I earnestly recommend that Congress may amend the second section of the act of March 3, 1819, so as to free its construction from the ambiguity which has so long existed and render the duty of the President plain ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... The ambiguity of his remark was lost upon the Indian. She heard the laugh and needed no more. She rose and began to clear the table, while Nevil stood in the open doorway and gazed out ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... quantities and gave the modest area the outward extension of a view that was "big" even when restricted to stars. Deeply and changeably blue, though not romantically large, they were yet youthfully, almost strangely beautiful, with their ambiguity of your scarce knowing if they most carried their possessor's vision out or most opened themselves to your own. Whatever you might feel, they stamped the place with their importance, as the house-agents say; so that, on one side or the other, you were ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... of the Central Powers to President Wilson's note (Dec., 1916) has been a polite refusal to indicate, beyond some generalities open to the blame of ambiguity, in a clear way what their demands of peace would be. It has been followed by their note to the neutrals of the 11th of January, which also avoids giving a distinct delineation of their demands. The Central Powers maintain that only a peace conference of the belligerents ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... has chosen a more harmonious background of meadow and woodland and river, of shepherds and forest nymphs. To Peele the priority in the use of pastoralism in drama must doubtless be assigned; but the play of Gallathea loses none of its merit on that account. Coupled with a pretty ambiguity of sex, this pastoral setting completes the model from which As You Like It was yet to be moulded. Probably Peele, in his Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, preceded Lyly also in the introduction of sex-disguise, but his Neronis stirs up no serious ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... to be a failing with the Providence young—with Providence people," ventured Miss Wingate with ambiguity. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... It is the ambiguity of language only which can make this proposition appear either doubtful or paradoxical. When properly explained and ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... write clearly and elegantly. I find no authority among the ancients, nor indeed among the moderns, for indistinct and unintelligible utterance. The Oracles indeed meant to be obscure; but then it was by the ambiguity of the expression, and not by the inarticulation of the words. For if people had not thought, at least, they understood them, they would neither have frequented nor presented them as they did. There was likewise ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... including the strip which is contiguous to Belgrade. To this the Slavs demurred because Belgrade could then no longer remain the Serbian capital. But of these demands M. Bratiano would make no abatement, nor in the promise of the Entente to fulfil them would he admit of any ambiguity. Roumania's experience in 1877, under M. Bratiano's father, when, after having helped Russia to defeat the Turks, she was deprived of Bessarabia and obliged to content herself with the Dobrudja, was the main motive for this ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... from far-sighted fear, is a question upon which the sequel may throw some light; for the present enough to state that it produced no effect. In a matter concerning the integrity of national territory acquired so dearly, King Constantine felt that he could not afford to allow any ambiguity or uncertainty: he was willing to waive the other two points, but not that. He therefore begged his brother to see M. Poincare and solicit in his name the President's help to secure that indispensable assurance. ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... have also to speak of the principle of analytical judgements, in opposition to synthetical judgements, which is the proper subject of our inquiries, because this very opposition will free the theory of the latter from all ambiguity, and place it clearly before our ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... pay my homage to the unrivalled capacity, insinuation, and eloquence of this man. I have disguised, but could never stifle the conviction, that his eyes and voice had a witchcraft in them, which rendered him truly formidable: but I reflected on the ambiguous expression of his countenance—an ambiguity which you were the first to remark; on the cloud which obscured his character; and on the suspicious nature of that concealment which he studied; and concluded you to be safe. I denied the obvious construction to appearances. I referred ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... the first footsteps of chronology be sought; not in Africa, because, first, the records of Egypt, so far as any have survived, are intensely Asiatic; liable to the same charge of hieroglyphic ambiguity combined with the exaggerations of outrageous nationality; because, secondly, the separate records of the adjacent State of Cyrene have perished; because, thirdly, the separate records of the next State, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... various logical processes, but principally to the one described in the last chapter, of diverting the student, at all difficult points, from criticism to edification. The Second Broad Church uses no ambiguity, but frankly avows that when the Bible contradicts science, the Bible must be in error. The First Broad Church maintains that the inspiration of the Bible differs in kind as well as in degree from that of other books. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... M. Halevy has translated an Assyrian text, whose meaning he thus epitomizes: "What becomes of the individual deposited in a tomb? A curious passage in one of the 'books' from the library of Assurbanipal answers this question, indirectly, indeed, but without any ambiguity. After death the vital and indestructible principle, the incorporeal spirit, is disengaged from the body; it is called in Assyrian ekimmou or egimmou.... The ekimmou inhabits the tomb and reposes upon the bed (zalalu) of the corpse. If well treated by the children ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... et. Notice that ambiguity is avoided by a change of conjunctions, et connecting the clauses and -que connecting praemia and poenas. Of these connectives, et connects two ideas that are independent of each other and of equal importance; -que denotes a close connection, often of two words that ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... filled." And when the old man had said this, he was dejected in his mind, and so continued. But in a little time news came that Antigonus was slain in a subterraneous place, which was itself also called Strato's Tower, by the same name with that Cesarea which lay by the sea-side; and this ambiguity it was which caused ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... said, was only intended as "the Euthanasia of States' Rights. When our rights are clear, security for them should be free from all ambiguity. We ought never to surrender territory, until it shall be wrested from us as we have wrested it from Mexico. Such a surrender would degrade and demoralize our section and disable us for effective resistance against future aggression. It is far better that this new acquisition should ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... titles have been used for many different books. In case of ambiguity, the one known to have been published by Harper & Brothers in ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... good gloves, I expect." The memory of such delightful sayings encouraged her to be extravagant. She thought that perhaps he would find her ankles worth a moment—if she took pains with them. Anyhow, he was worth dressing for. James never noticed anything—or if he did, his ambiguity was two-edged. "Extraordinary hat," he might say, and drop his eyeglass, which always gave an air of finality to comments of the sort. But her shopping done, for Lancelot's sake, life stretched before her a grey waste. She went back to tea, to a novel, to a weekly ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... be out of the question to trust to words, however choicely picked, for, upon inspection, there was a delightful ambiguity about every one of this girl's features that defied such idiotic makeshifts. Her eyes, for example, I noted with a faint thrill of surprise, just escaped being brown by virtue of an amber glow they had; what colour, then, was I conscientiously ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... an attachment of no common kind to a lady, whose name at this period came frequently before the public associated with his. A veil of ambiguity or mystery covered, and still covers, the relations of the Prince of Wales with Mrs. Fitzherbert. She received all the respect and exercised all the influence which could belong to rank, character, accomplishments, and manners, in the highest class of society in this country daring ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... that his work was frequently criticized for its ambiguity and lack of consistency. But he claimed that these defects were unavoidable consequences of his way of writing. He had to write what he saw and could not be expected to express that clearly which he himself saw only dimly. "I naturally desire to please ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... So self-contained, hard-set, and immutable was his expression that it was impossible to read anything from it except sternness and resolution, qualities which are as likely to be associated with the highest natures as with the most dangerous. It may have been on account of this ambiguity of expression that the world's estimate of the old merchant was a very varying one. He was known to be a fanatic in religion, a purist in morals, and a man of the strictest commercial integrity. Yet there were some few who ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to be a model of ambiguity, by which it is impossible Napoleon could have been imposed upon. However, as yet he had no suspicion of the hostility of Austria, which speedily became manifest; his grand object then was the Spanish business, and, as I have before observed, one of the secrets of Napoleon's genius ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... professes to have translated his work from the English of one Mr. D'Avisson (Davidson?) although there is a terrible ambiguity in the statement. "J' en ai eu," says he "l'original de Monsieur D'Avisson, medecin des mieux versez qui soient aujourd'huy dans la cnoissance des Belles Lettres, et sur tout de la Philosophic Naturelle. Je lui ai cette obligation entre les autres, de m' ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... no growth in them, no human variableness or complexity; it is "Every Man in his Humor" over again, with the humor left out. Densdeth is an impossible rascal; Churm, a scarcely more possible Rhadamanthine saint. Cecil Dreeme herself never fully recovers from the ambiguity forced upon her by her masculine attire; and Emma Denman could never have been both what we are told she was, and what she is described as being. As for Robert Byng, the supposed narrator of the tale, his name seems to have been given him in order wantonly ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Laube was concerned in no sort of political work, but had devoted himself merely to literary activity, always aiming simply at aesthetic objects, made the action of the police quite incomprehensible to us for the time being. The disgusting ambiguity with which the Leipzig authorities answered all his questions as to the cause of his expulsion soon gave him the strongest suspicions as to what their intentions ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... like the Romanists, maintain that this is not a Real Presence, and assuming their own interpretation of the phrase to be the only true one, press into their service the testimony of divines who, though using the phrase, apply it in a sense the reverse of theirs. The ambiguity of the phrase, and its misapplication by the Church of Rome, have induced many of our ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... a syllabic; not letters, but syllables, are indicated by each character; 73 characters are all that are needed to express the whole language. It is so simple and stenographic that the fathers often use it as a rapid way of writing French. It has, however, the disadvantage of ambiguity at times. Any Indian boy can learn it in a week or two; practically all the Indians use it. What a commentary on our own cumbrous and illogical spelling, which takes even a bright child two ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... kind of ambiguity, and in practice still more insidious, is the ambiguity which arises from the connotation or emotional implications of words. The use of "republican" and "democrat" cited above runs over into this kind of confusion. In collegiate athletics "professional" ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... Government, therefore, arises from the same voluntary conversation of men; and it is evident, that the same convention, which establishes government, will also determine the persons who are to govern, and will remove all doubt and ambiguity in this particular. And the voluntary consent of men must here have the greater efficacy, that the authority of the magistrate does at first stand upon the foundation of a promise of the subjects, by which they bind themselves to obedience; ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed, or otherwise than so obscurely intimated. Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors, he walked ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... med. Lat. ambiguitas, from Lat. ambiguus, doubtful; ambi, both ways, agere, to drive), doubtful ness or uncertainty. In law an ambiguity as to the meaning of the words of a written instrument may be of considerable importance. Ambiguity, in law, is of two kinds, patent and latent. (1) Patent ambiguity is that ambiguity which is apparent on the face of an instrument to any one perusing it, even if he be unacquainted with the circumstances ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... position of the satirist is oftentimes one which he would not have chosen, had the election been left to himself. In attacking bad principles, he is obliged to select some individual who has made himself their exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to the end that what he says may not, through ambiguity, be dissipated tenues in auras. For what says Seneca? Longum iter per praecepta, breve et efficace per exempla. A bad principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... shown as printed. When there is an error or ambiguity, corrections are given in [[double brackets]] at the end of the entry or as a separate paragraph. Where possible, these standard wordings ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... William Morris's poems, in the new collected edition, {5} has convinced me that no man, or, at least, no middle-aged man, can be a critic. I read Mr. Morris's poems (thanks to the knightly honours conferred on the Bard of Penrhyn, there is now no ambiguity as to 'Mr. Morris'), but it is not the book only that I read. The scroll of my youth is unfolded. I see the dear place where first I perused "The Blue Closet"; the old faces of old friends flock around me; old chaff, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the opposite side. No. 33. To break through the enemy's line in succession and engage on the other side.' Had these two lucid significations been adopted by Howe there would have been no possible ambiguity as to ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... a scientific language you demand, without ambiguity, as precise as mathematical formulae, and with every term in relations of exact logical consistency with every other. It will be a language with all the inflexions of verbs and nouns regular and all its ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... irreconcilable conflicts and insoluble problems; and in his desire to reconcile and solve, he occasionally is in danger of wrenching his characters out of drawing and muddling their motives. Half a dozen critics have already called attention to the ambiguity of Mathilde's position and intentions in "The Newly Married." That she loves Axel, the husband, is clear; and the probability is that she meant to avenge herself upon him for having before his marriage used her as a decoy, when the real object of his attention was her friend Laura. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... pretend to pattern very close on the other—not in discipline, anyhow," said Mr. Harris with ambiguity. "But you'll find Ensign Sand very willing to do anything she can for you. She's a ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... remark as the natural corollary of mine, but some sub-conscious sense in me insisted that its very ambiguity was designed. ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... out of this ambiguity. In addressing the woman worker who does not, at the rate which her labour commands on the market, earn enough to give her any reasonable measure of financial freedom, the agitator will assure her that the suffrage would ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... called upon Lady Channice. And so it was that Mrs. Grey satisfied at once benevolence and curiosity in her staunch visits to the recluse of Charlock House, and could feel herself as Lady Channice's one wholesome link with the world that she had rejected or—here lay all the ambiguity, all the mystery that, for years, had whetted Mrs. Grey's curiosity to fever-point—that had ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... To avoid all ambiguity then, or the possibility of my doing anything else than what you are pleased to command, may I ask you to define up to what age a human being ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Missouri Compromise, and nominated Buchanan, in apparently sure confidence of that super-serviceable zeal in behalf of slavery which he so obediently rendered; also, that in a platform of intolerable length there was such a cunning ambiguity of word and concealment of sense, such a double dealing of phrase and meaning, as to render it possible that the pro-slavery Democrats of the South and some antislavery Democrats of the North might join for the last time to elect a ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... interest could afford you from such a principal as you mention; and the most graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be, that it left you free to your voluntary functions. That is the less light part of the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in darker, because of the ambiguity of the word light, which Donne in his admirable poem on the Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... not naturally distinguish metal and mettle in pronunciation, tho' when there is any danger of ambiguity I say metal for the former and met'l for the latter; and I should probably do so (without thinking about it) in a public speech. In my young days the people about me usually pronounced met'l for both. Theoretically I think the distinction is a desirable one to make; the fact ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... prevail on himself to assume the dissimulation which is necessary to be well received in the world, he is perfectly in the right in preferring solitude to society. Rousseau has already censured the ambiguity of the piece, by which what is deserving of approbation seems to be turned into ridicule. His opinion was not altogether unprejudiced; for his own character, and his behaviour towards the world, had a striking similarity ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... there has been some intentional ambiguity in the use of the word Law. Much of the misunderstanding of Judaism has arisen from this ambiguity. 'Law' is in no adequate sense what the Jews themselves understood by the nomism of their religion. In modern times Law and Religion tend more and more to separate, and to speak of Judaism as ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... the language of the protocol is free from ambiguity, but if it were otherwise is there any individual American or Mexican who would place such a construction upon it as to convert it into a vain attempt to revive this article, which had been so often and so solemnly condemned? Surely no person ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... a pun here upon the resemblance in meaning of the words "verba dare" and "fabulam dare." The first expression means to "deceive" or "impose upon;" the latter phrase has also the same meaning, but it may signify as well "to represent" or "produce a Play." Thus the exclamation in its ambiguity may mean, "he has produced a Play, and has not succeeded in deceiving us," or "he has deceived us, and yet has not deceived us." This is the interpretation which ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... so equivocal, that the persons to whom it was addressed did not know whether or not they ought to interpret the contents into a challenge; when our hero observed, that the ambiguity of his expressions plainly proved there was a door left open for accommodation; and proposed that they should forthwith visit the writer at his own apartment. They accordingly followed his advice, and found the abbe in his morning gown and slippers, with three ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... And notwithstanding any ambiguity which might arise as to the scope of the treaty with regard to individual questions, the conclusion of peace was in itself of great importance: it implied a change of policy which created the greatest stir. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... This grave shall have a living monument:] There is an ambiguity in this phrase. It either means an endurable monument such as will outlive time, or it darkly hints at ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... as the debates in the convention of 1787 and the discussions in the Federalist and in the ratifying conventions of the States have often been referred to as throwing important light on clauses in the Constitution seeming to show ambiguity. The debates on the war amendment, when they were proposed and ratified, were thoroughly expounded before the court in bringing before that tribunal the intention of the members of Congress, by which the court, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... of the two princes murdered in the tower. He is also occasionally spoken of as a son of Clarence, and sometimes as an illegitimate son of Richard III.—any royal personage, in fact, whose age happened to suit. In spite of the slight ambiguity which overhung his princely origin, he was received with high honour in Cork, and having appealed to the Earls of Desmond and Kildare, was accepted by the former with open arms. "You Irish would crown apes!" Henry afterwards said, not indeed unwarrantably. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... for another moment or two, apparently letting this sink in. It wasn't until he'd turned and walked out of the door that I realized the ambiguity of that retort of mine. I was almost prompted to go after him. But I checked myself by saying: "Well, if the shoe fits, put it on!" But in my heart of hearts I didn't mean it. I wanted him to come back, I wanted him to share my happiness ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... last occasion by the unquestioned exercise of synodical powers. This Book, so approved, was then, by authority of Parliament, imposed upon the whole nation. This being clearly the case on the two occasions when the procedure is free from ambiguity, I think we may fairly argue for the same construction of those proceedings, on the other two occasions, which are more open to question. The policy of the Acts of Uniformity is to be taken as a whole. The writer of the paper in the Record Office to which I have referred, purporting to give ...
— The Acts of Uniformity - Their Scope and Effect • T.A. Lacey
... great care should be taken to avoid ambiguity in the use of pronouns. It is very easy to multiply and combine pronouns in such a way that while grammatical rules may not be broken the reader may be left hopelessly confused. Such ambiguous sentences should be cleared up, either by a rearrangement of the words or by substitution of nouns ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton |
