Disambiguate

Disambiguate is a verb meaning to remove ambiguity by determining which of several possible meanings or referents is intended in a given context. The act of disambiguation involves selecting a single interpretation for a term or symbol that has multiple senses, so that communication or data processing can proceed unambiguously.

Etymology-wise, the word derives from Latin dis- meaning apart or away, and ambiguus meaning unclear or doubtful. The term thus captures the goal of clarifying which sense is meant when a surface form could refer to more than one concept.

In language and knowledge representation, disambiguation relies on context, syntax, semantics, world knowledge, and user intent. Humans perform this continually during reading and listening, often aided by qualifiers or punctuation to prevent misinterpretation. In natural language processing, word sense disambiguation (WSD) is a core task in which algorithms try to assign the correct sense to a polysemous word from a predefined sense inventory such as WordNet, based on surrounding text.

In information retrieval and search technologies, disambiguation helps deliver relevant results by distinguishing between entities that share a name. For example, a query involving a common proper name may be clarified through contextual clues or explicit disambiguation features. In reference works such as encyclopedias, a disambiguation page lists all topics sharing the same name and links to the appropriate articles, enabling readers to navigate to the intended subject.