amphiboly

amphiboly

English

Etymology

From Old French amphibolie, from Latin amphibolia, from Ancient Greek ἀμφιβολία (amphibolía, “ambiguity”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /amˈfɪbəli/

Noun

amphiboly (countable and uncountable, plural amphibolies)

1. (grammar) An ambiguous grammatical construction.
   • 1931, Adrian Coates, "Philosophy as Criticism and Point of View," Philosophy, vol. 6, no. 23, p. 339,

     By logical errors I mean such simple things as Equivocation, Amphiboly, and Begging the Question.

   • 1987, Jeffrey Buechner, "Radically Misinterpreting Radical Interpretation," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 45, no. 4, p. 410,

     The language might be fraught with word ambiguity or sentence amphiboly.

Usage notes

• Strictly speaking, in an amphiboly the individual words are unambiguous; the ambiguity results entirely from the linguistic manner in which they have been combined. [1]

Derived terms

• amphibology

Translations

an ambiguous grammatical construction

Tagalog: kabilaninsabi

See also

• equivocation

References

1. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989.

Anagrams

• ambophily