See ambiguous in American Heritage Dictionary 4 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 Blake'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.
See ambiguous in Webster's New World Roget's A-Z Thesaurus II
adjective
Liable to more than one interpretation:
cloudy, equivocal, inexplicit, nebulous, obscure, uncertain, unclear, vague. See certain, clearNot affording certainty:
borderline, chancy, clouded, doubtful, dubious, dubitable, equivocal, inconclusive, indecisive, indeterminate, problematic, problematical, questionable, uncertain, unclear, unsure. (Informal) iffy. Idioms: at issue, in doubt, in question. See certain, clear
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