adj 1: open to two or more interpretations; or of uncertain nature or significance; or (often) intended to mislead; "an equivocal statement"; "the polling had a complex and equivocal (or ambiguous) message for potential female candidates"; "the officer's equivocal behavior increased the victim's uneasiness"; "popularity is an equivocal crown"; "an equivocal response to an embarrassing question" [syn: ambiguous] [ant: unequivocal]
2: open to question; "aliens of equivocal loyalty"; "his conscience reproached him with the equivocal character of the union into which he had forced his son"-Anna Jameson 3: uncertain as a sign or indication; "the evidence from bacteriologic analysis was equivocal"
Synonyms: ambiguous, equivocal, obscure, recondite, abstruse, vague, cryptic, enigmatic
These adjectives mean lacking clarity of meaning.
Ambiguous indicates the presence of two or more possible meanings: Frustrated by ambiguous instructions, I was unable to assemble the toy.
Something equivocal is unclear or misleading: “The polling had a complex and equivocal message for potential female candidates” (David S. Broder).
Obscure implies lack of clarity of expression: Some say that Kafka's style is obscure and complex.
Recondite and abstruse connote the erudite obscurity of the scholar: “some recondite problem in historiography” (Walter Laqueur). The students avoided the professor's abstruse lectures.
What is vague is expressed in indefinite form or reflects imprecision of thought: “Vague... forms of speech... have so long passed for mysteries of science” (John Locke).
Cryptic suggests a sometimes deliberately puzzling terseness: The new insurance policy is full of cryptic terms.
Something enigmatic is mysterious and puzzling: The biography struggles to make sense of the artist's enigmatic life.
첫댓글 두가지 뜻으로 해석되는, 모호한