Word.ws English Dictionary

ambilingualism

ambilingualism noun: the condition of being ambilingual; the ability to speak two or more languages with nativelike proficiency and fluency, treating them as completely equal without dominance of one over the other.

Noun

ambilingualism (uncountable)

  1. The condition of being ambilingual; the ability to speak two or more languages with nativelike proficiency and fluency, treating them as completely equal without dominance of one over the other.
    • As has been noted, bilingualism is frequently still assumed to be synonymous with ambilingualism (i.e. native-like competence in both languages), although researchers in bilingualism have identified a large number of forms depending on whether the respective definition concentrates on age of...2002, Philip Herdina, Ulrike Jessner, A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism

Origin of ambilingualism

From ambilingual + -ism.

Questions about ambilingualism

What does ambilingualism mean?
Ambilingualism means the condition of being ambilingual; the ability to speak two or more languages with nativelike proficiency and fluency, treating them as completely equal without dominance of one over the other.
What part of speech is ambilingualism?
Ambilingualism is a noun.

Words near ambilingualism in the dictionary

  1. ambilaterally
  2. ambilevous
  3. ambilineal
  4. ambilineally
  5. ambilingual
  6. ambilingualism
  7. ambilinguals
  8. ambilocal
  9. ambilocality
  10. ambilogy
  11. ambiloquent

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ambilingualism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ambilingualism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ambilingualism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.