1. the property of a behavior, behavior pattern, or situation that might be interpreted in more than one way.

2. in linguistics, the property of a word, phrase, or sentence that has more than one possible meaning. Ambiguity in a phrase or sentence may be lexical, as in The students are revolting, or structural, as in black cats and dogs; often there is a combination of both factors. In psycholinguistics, the main area of interest has been the process used to interpret sentences whose surface structure could reflect two quite different deep structures, as in the instruction Before opening tin, stand in boiling water for 10 minutes. In psychoanalytic theory, ambiguous words or phrases are usually interpreted as a reflection of the speaker’s conflicted hidden feelings or unconscious wishes about the subject. See also homonym; polysemy; pun. —ambiguous adj.