ambivalence
/æmˈbɪvələns/
ambivalence noun: the coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings (such as love and hate) towards a person, object or idea.
Noun
ambivalence (countable and uncountable, plural ambivalences)
- The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings (such as love and hate) towards a person, object or idea.
- "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.1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Prologue - The great sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argued that philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism both fall under “allosemitism”: literally Othering the Jew. He defined it not as resentment of what is different, which is xenophobia, but rather of what defies order and clear categories. In 1997, he wrote, “The Jew...2020 January 28, Mairov Zonszein, “Christian Zionist philo-Semitism is driving Trump’s Israel policy”, in The Washington Post, archived from the original on 30 Jan 2020
- "I dearly loved my master, son," she said.
- A state of uncertainty or indecisiveness.
ambivalence meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Kannada
ambivalence in Tamil
- இருமனப்போக்கு, இருமுகப் போக்கு, விருப்பும் வெறுப்பும்
ambivalence in Urdu
- دو جَذبِیَت
ambivalence in Bengali
- দোদুল্যমানতা, একই ব্যক্তির যুগপৎ বিদ্যমানতা, উভয়বল, যুগপৎ এবং পরস্পরবিরোধী দৃষ্টিভঙ্গি, আবেগ
ambivalence in Kannada
- ಇಕ್ಕಲೆಕಸುವು, ಇಕ್ಕಲೆಶಕ್ತಿ
More languagesFewer languages
- ambivalence in Sanskrit
- विधान vidhāna
- ambivalence in Persian
- ضد و نقیض zedd-o-naqiz
Examples of ambivalence in a sentence
- He met his two most recent partners at bars, and expressed strong ambivalence and dislike of meeting partners online, but reported half a dozen additional hookups with partners met online.
- It's not just digital media tools that amplify the ambivalence of humor online.
- But her reactions to Lord Byron, riven beyond ambivalence, are a primer of the female-Byronist dilemma.
Forms of ambivalence
| plural | ambivalences |
|---|
Origin of ambivalence
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.
Words formed from ambivalence
Questions about ambivalence
- What does ambivalence mean?
- Ambivalence means the coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings (such as love and hate) towards a person, object or idea.
- What is ambivalence in Tamil?
- Ambivalence in Tamil is இருமனப்போக்கு, இருமுகப் போக்கு, விருப்பும் வெறுப்பும். See Ambivalence meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is ambivalence?
- Ambivalence is a noun.
- How do you pronounce ambivalence?
- Ambivalence is pronounced /æmˈbɪvələns/.
- What is the plural of ambivalence?
- The plural of ambivalence is ambivalences.
Words near ambivalence in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ambivalence (page history and authors); ambivalence (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ambivalence (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ambivalence (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ambivalence (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); विधान (Sanskrit) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-ambivalence.wav.
Cite this entry: “ambivalence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ambivalence. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.