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ambivalent
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show 72 more with this conextual meaning
  • Niels Bohr, who, like our own Norwegian poet Vinje, was known for his ambivalence, once said: There are two kinds of truths.   (source)
    ambivalence = uncertainty, or mixed feelings
  • Back and forth my mind went, weaving a yes by night and unraveling it by day to a no.
    ...
    I forgot my earlier ambivalence, and I blamed Papa for everything...   (source)
    ambivalence = uncertainty or indecision
  • I surrender to ambivalence, to happy contradictions and seeming inconsistencies in myself and almost everything else, including God.   (source)
    ambivalence = mixed feelings
  • "I too have become acquainted with ambivalence," I said.   (source)
  • Grandmother suffered ambivalent feelings every Fourth of July; she was patriotic enough to stand on her doorstep waving a small American flag—the flag itself was not any larger than the palm of her hand—but at the same time, she frowned upon all the ruckus; she frequently reprimanded the children who rode their bicycles across her lawn, and she shouted at the dogs to stop their fool barking.†   (source)
  • Sex is no longer a mysterious rite, viewed with ambivalence or downright loathing, conducted in the dark and inspiring suicides and murders.†   (source)
  • I sighed in relief again when Mr. Banner turned the lights on, finally glancing at Edward; he was looking at me, his eyes ambivalent.†   (source)
  • Initially he had been ambivalent about whether Chicago should even seek the world's fair.†   (source)
  • The ban on phone calls was, then, purely punitive, just as the pepper-spraying of the child-man had been born of a combination of opportunity, cruelty, ambivalence, and sport.†   (source)
  • Mr. Madison handed it to me without a word and shook my hand, looking ambivalent.†   (source)
  • Jessica nodded to herself, remembering her son's ambivalent feelings toward the spice drug and the prescient awareness it precipitated.†   (source)
  • But by the time we were ten, we'd grown more ambivalent about it.†   (source)
  • He had not always been so ambivalent about his home.†   (source)
  • You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent.†   (source)
  • She felt strangely ambivalent towards him.†   (source)
  • At the time, I felt ambivalent about this.†   (source)
  • He let the statement stand for a while, a verbal monolith of ambivalence.†   (source)
  • On the whole, Mrs. Johnson's attitude toward her father was ambivalent, but one aspect of him she had always respected-his fortitude.†   (source)
  • I found myself crying, laugh-ing, numb with depression, nervous and pacing, ambivalent, angry, and filled with self-loathing.†   (source)
  • He was vague and ambivalent on matters of policy.†   (source)
  • At the same time Edgar force-fitted the gloves onto her hands and felt the ambivalence, the conflict.†   (source)
  • These days she is ambivalent about the law: While passage did create a backlash, it also signaled to villagers the severity of the health concerns about cutting.†   (source)
  • My heart filled with ambivalence with each good-bye.†   (source)
  • Ambivalent: could be no, could be your guess is as good as mine.†   (source)
  • He had never told anyone about his coming of age before, because he felt ambivalent about it.†   (source)
  • I suppose I have an ambivalent attitude toward it.†   (source)
  • Jen Shinnan gets a very ambivalent picture of you.†   (source)
  • Jefferson had been slower, more cautious and ambivalent than Adams about resolving his views on independence.†   (source)
  • But as Preston also found among these train passengers, Americans are ambivalent about all of this.†   (source)
  • He seemed ambivalent.†   (source)
  • It was but one of the reasons for my loneliness at the Institute; it was but one of the things that made friendship with me an ambivalent enterprise.†   (source)
  • Some had no ambivalence whatsoever.†   (source)
  • In fact, it seems to always fail me when I need it most—if a guy is ambivalent about his sexual orientation, I totally can't tell by what he's wearing.†   (source)
  • With cautious, ambivalent words the 1st assistant clerk did his best for himself and consequently the worst for his superior, Lee Teng.†   (source)
  • But Roseman had also spent a sleepless night, brooding over the Perry Mason television program the evening before, which his wife was fond of but toward which Roseman cherished a fierce ambivalence, wanting at once to be a successful trial lawyer like Perry Mason and, since this was impossible, to destroy Perry Mason by undermining him.†   (source)
  • There was ambivalence in my heart.†   (source)
  • SUNLIGHT (after a long pause, in control again): My feelings about murder are ambivalent.†   (source)
  • That ambivalence turned to remorse soon after he shot the moose.   (source)
    ambivalence = mixture of conflicting feelings
  • Nasuada regarded the marks with ambivalence.   (source)
    ambivalence = mixed feelings
  • No ambivalence this time, no doubt about what he'd said.   (source)
    ambivalence = uncertainty
  • Although she expressed some ambivalence about the invitation in a letter to Fischer in January, Hunt ultimately accepted the unpaid job and arrived in Nepal at the end of March, eager to contribute to the expedition's success.   (source)
    ambivalence = mixed feelings
  • Andy admitted that when Rob had first offered him this Everest job he'd been ambivalent about accepting it:   (source)
    ambivalent = uncertain (having mixed feelings)
  • Rage and grief, thwarted desire, lust, self-pity: these are emotions gods know well. But guilt and shame, remorse, ambivalence, those are foreign countries to our kind, which must be learned stone by stone.   (source)
    ambivalence = uncertainty or indecision
  • So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don't have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence.   (source)
    ambivalence = mixed feelings
  • His ambivalence toward sex echoes that of celebrated others who embraced wilderness with single-minded passion, Thoreau (who was a lifelong virgin) and the naturalist John Muir, most prominently, to say nothing of countless lesser-known pilgrims, seekers, misfits, and adventurers.   (source)
  • I was first hurled into an ambivalent presence many years ago, when a friend's mother died unexpectedly.   (source)
    ambivalent = uncertain (having mixed feelings)
  • This ambivalence reflects underlying American support for the concept of an international criminal court but deep reservations about the structure of the court as it was developed in Rome.   (source)
  • He stared out into the foggy morning with a pained and ambivalent expression.†   (source)
  • I rolled over to look at her, and her expression seemed ambivalent.†   (source)
  • I am ambivalent toward you, Rider; I am just as prepared to hate you as I am to love you.†   (source)
  • Major Sanderson sprang up with joy when he heard the words 'ambivalent attitude'.†   (source)
  • There was an ambivalence that vitalized the crowd.†   (source)
  • Privately, Adams was ambivalent on the subject.†   (source)
  • Any ambivalence Thomas had felt toward this hearing left him.†   (source)
  • With one hand she made a frustrated, ambivalent gesture.†   (source)
  • Despite her early enthusiasm, she now felt strangely ambivalent about going to the auction.†   (source)
  • Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat gestured ambivalence.†   (source)
  • Lieutenant Issaaia noticed Lieutenant Dariet's mood with a familiar ambivalence.†   (source)
  • He didn't bristle, but his tone had an edge: "I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can't buy them.†   (source)
  • I think Farmer taps into a universal anxiety and also into a fundamental place in some troubled consciences, into what he calls "ambivalence," the often unacknowledged uneasiness that some of the fortunate feel about their place in the world, the thing he once told me he designed his life to avoid.†   (source)
  • Ambivalence?†   (source)
  • But despite living in a nation built on immigration, Americans already here have always had ambivalent feelings about those just arriving.†   (source)
  • A sense of great anger, grief, and ambivalence pressed heavily against Eragon as Glaedr's consciousness enveloped his mind and, it seemed, those of Murtagh and Thorn, for they tensed, as if in anticipation of battle.†   (source)
  • Eragon shifted in his chair, and by the motion he must have revealed something of his ambivalence, for Oromis smiled and said, "If it will help you relax, Eragon, I promise you this: before you and Saphira leave for the Varden, you may pick any use of magic, and in the brief while we have, I will teach you everything I can concerning it."†   (source)
  • They were the people of superior sensibility, the ones who'd gained a rational mastery over themselves, who were not subject to moral ambivalence, to the sentimental babyshit of consequence and anguish.†   (source)
  • That was twenty-four hours ago, and the president had seemed surprisingly ambivalent about the prospect of CNN breaking the story.†   (source)
  • I saw Lieutenant Issaaia react with an instant of ambivalence—the next line spoke of food offerings not made for the dead, and the junior lieutenant conceivably might have been criticizing Lieutenant Awn for not coming to supper the night before, or breakfast on time this morning.†   (source)
  • Was it not the origin of the love half of my ambivalent feeling?†   (source)
  • Psychoanalysis is a technique to cure excessively suffering individuals of the unconsciously misdirected desires and hostilities thatweave around them their private webs of unreal terrors and ambivalent attractions; the patient released from these finds himself able to participate with comparative satisfaction in the more realistic fears, hostilities, erotic and religious practices, business enterprises, wars, pastimes, and household tasks offered to him by his particular culture.†   (source)
  • It was only the other day when I read Freud for the first time, that I discovered that this violently disturbing conflict of love and hate is a common feeling; and is called ambivalence.†   (source)
  • The revolt against the village (about which Anderson was always ambivalent) has faded into history.†   (source)
  • As it unfolds, you may not be so unambivalent, but you're right to want it with a passion.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unambivalent means not and reverses the meaning of ambivalent. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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