Ambivalence
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings (such as love and hate) towards a person, object or idea. countable, uncountable
""I dearly loved my master, son," she said. "You should have hated him," I said. "He gave me several sons," she said, "and because I loved my sons I learned to love their father though I hated him too." "I too have become acquainted with ambivalence, I said."
- 2 mixed feelings or emotions wordnet
- 3 A state of uncertainty or indecisiveness. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"Spenser's sarcastic and joking remarks are often misinterpreted as signs of ambivalence and often taken too seriously."
Etymology
Borrowed from German Ambivalenz (“simultaneous conflicting feelings”), from Latin ambi- (“both”) and valentia (“strength”), from the verb valere (“to be strong”) (see valiant); spelled on the model of French-origin words ending in -ence. The German term was coined by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1910; by 1929, it had taken on a broader literary and general sense. Equivalent to ambi- + valence.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.