Ambiguous

Ambiguous is an adjective describing something that can be understood in more than one way. An ambiguous statement or situation does not have a single, clearly defined meaning. The word derives from Latin ambiguus, meaning doubtful or open to two interpretations.

Ambiguity is categorized as lexical, syntactic, or semantic. Lexical ambiguity arises from a word with multiple meanings, such as bank (financial institution or riverbank). Syntactic ambiguity results from a sentence structure that admits more than one parsing, for example: I saw the man with the telescope. Semantic ambiguity involves uncertainty about reference or truth conditions within a given context.

Ambiguity can affect everyday communication, leading to misinterpretation or humor. It is also a central concern in law and policy, where ambiguous terms may be interpreted in different ways, often in a way that favors one side. In poetry and rhetoric, ambiguity can be a deliberate stylistic device.

In linguistics and computer science, resolving ambiguity is a major task. In natural language processing, techniques such as word sense disambiguation and syntactic parsing are used to determine the most plausible interpretation given context. Disambiguation may rely on context, world knowledge, or probabilistic models.