English

Noun

amphiboly ‎(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.

Translations

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

See also

• equivocation

References

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