A word, phrase, sentence, or other communication is called ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way. Ambiguity is distinct from vagueness, which arises when the boundaries of meaning are indistinct. Ambiguity is one way in which the meanings of words and phrases can be unclear, but there is another way, which is different from ambiguity: vagueness. ...

Lexical ambiguity arises when context is insufficient to determine the sense of a single word that has more than one meaning. For example, the word "bank" has several meanings, including "financial institution" and "edge of a river", but if someone says "I deposited $100 in the bank", the intended meaning is clear. More problematic are words whose senses express closely related concepts. "Good", for example, can mean "useful" or "functional" (That's a good hammer), "exemplary" (She's a good student), "pleasing" (This is good soup), "moral" (He is a good person), and probably other similar things. "I have a good daughter" isn't clear about which sense is intended.

Syntactic ambiguity arises when a sentence can be parsed in more than one way. "He ate the cookies on the couch", for example, could mean that he ate those cookies which were on the couch (as opposed to those that were on the table), or it could mean that he was sitting on the couch when he ate the cookies. Spoken language can also contain lexical ambiguities, where there is more than one way to break up a set of sounds into words, for example "ice cream" and "I scream". This is rarely a problem due to the use of context. (For more information, see Syntactic ambiguity.) Syntactic ambiguity is a property of sentences which may be parsed in more that one way. ... Sofas come in a variety of colors, patterns, and materials (two-seater model) Ancient Greek sofa A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, or chesterfield is an item of furniture for the comfortable seating of more than one person. ... Sofas come in a variety of colors, patterns, and materials (two-seater model) Ancient Greek sofa A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, or chesterfield is an item of furniture for the comfortable seating of more than one person. ... Sofas come in a variety of colors, patterns, and materials (two-seater model) Ancient Greek sofa A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, or chesterfield is an item of furniture for the comfortable seating of more than one person. ... Syntactic ambiguity is a property of sentences which may be parsed in more that one way. ...

Philosophers (and other users of logic) spend a lot of time and effort searching for and removing ambiguity in arguments, because it can lead to incorrect conclusions and can be used to deliberately conceal bad arguments. For example, a politician might say "I oppose taxes which hinder economic growth". Some will think he opposes taxes in general because they hinder economic growth; others will think he opposes only those taxes that he believes will hinder economic growth (although in writing, the correct insertion or omission of a comma after "taxes" removes ambiguity here). The politician hopes that each will interpret the statement in the way he wants, and both will think the politician is on his side. The logical fallacies of amphiboly and equivocation also rely on the use of ambiguous words and phrases. A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. ... Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, but coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy amongst philosophers (see below). ... A comma ( , ) is a punctuation mark. ... Amphibology or amphiboly (from the Greek ampibolia) is, in logic, a verbal fallacy arising from ambiguity in the grammatical structure of a sentence. ... The fallacy of equivocation is committed when someone uses the same word in different meanings in an argument, implying that the word means the same each time round. ...

In literature and rhetoric, on the other hand, ambiguity can be a useful tool. Groucho Marx's classic joke depends on a grammatical ambiguity for its humor, for example: Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. What he was doing in my pajamas I'll never know. Songs and poetry often rely on ambiguous words for artistic effect, as in the song title "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (where "blue" can refer to the color, or to sadness). Open Directory Project: Literature World Literature Electronic Text Archives Magazines and E-zines Online Writing Writers Resources Libraries, Digital Cataloguing, Metadata Distance Learning What is Literature? Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Classicism in Literature The Universal Library, by Carnegie Mellon University Project Gutenberg Online Library Abacci - Project Gutenberg texts... Rhetoric (from Greek ρητωρ, rhêtôr, orator) is one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are dialectic and grammar) in Western culture. ... Groucho Marx poses for an NBC promotional photograph Julius Henry Marx, known as Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), was an American comedian, working both with his siblings, the Marx Brothers, and on his own. ... This article discusses humour in terms of comedy and laughter. ...

In music pieces or sections which confound expectations and may be or are interpreted simultaneously in different ways are ambiguous, such as some polytonality, polymeter, other ambiguous meters or rhythms, and ambiguous phrasing, or (Stein 2005, p.79) any aspect of music. The music of Africa is often purposefully ambiguous. To quote Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1935, p.195), "Theorists are apt to vex themselves with vain efforts to remove uncertainty just where it has a high aesthetic value." Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Music Look up Music on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikisource, as part of the 1911 Encyclopedia Wikiproject, has original text related to this article: Music Wikicities has a wiki about Music: Music MusicNovatory: the science of music encyclopedia Science of Music... The use of more than two keys simultaneously is known in music as polytonality. ... Metre is the measurement of a musical line into measures of stressed and unstressed beats, indicated in Western notation by a symbol called a time signature. ... The metre, or meter, is the basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Système International dUnités). ... Rhythm (Greek ρυθμός = tempo) is the variation of the duration of sounds or other events over time. ... In music a phrase is a section of music that is relatively self contained and coherent over a medium time scale. ... An aspect of music is any characteristic, dimension, or element taken as a part or component of music. ... Africa is a large and diverse continent, consisting of dozens of countries, hundreds of languages and thousands of races, tribes and ethnic groups. ... Wikisource has original works written by or about: Donald Francis Tovey Sir Donald Francis Tovey (July 17, 1875 – July 10, 1940) was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer and pianist. ...

See also

• double entendre
• imprecise language
• logical fallacy
• semantics

A double entendre or innuendo is a figure of speech similar to the pun, in which a spoken phrase can be understood in either of two ways. ... Regular people use imprecise language much more than the precise language used by philosophers and scientists. ... A logical fallacy is an error in logical argument which is independent of the truth of the premises. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ...

External link

• Collection of Ambiguous or Inconsistent/Incomplete Statements