settings
The Young Lions vocabulary
160 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
help & settings
[x]
-
equivocal
-
synonyms: prevaricatory, tergiversatory, amphibological ???
► definition
Definition:evasively ambiguous
► uses
Uses:
his answers were at the same time so vague and equivocal, that her mother, though often disheartened, had never yet despaired of succeeding at last.
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (1813)
---
Vanessa has broken up with Youssef, and is seeing Lapo now. They're not together, it's more fluid than that. Being fluid, it assumes the shape of the container, which is appropriate given how equivocal they both are.
Melania G. Mazzucco. Limbo (Virginia Jewiss translation), p.356 (2014)
---
For what evidence had he in reality that O’Brien was any kind of political conspirator? Nothing but a flash of the eyes and a single equivocal remark; beyond that, only his own secret imaginings, founded on a dream.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949)
---
It’s difficult for me to believe I have power over him, of any sort, but I do; although it’s of an equivocal kind.
---
I would say, sir, that your opinions are not the opinions to be expected from a gentleman."
As Hermann completed this equivocal sentence, all eyes were turned upon the Baron.
Edgar Allan Poe. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4: Mystification (1837)
---
DAP. By this good light, I have nothing.
SUB. Ti, ti, ti, ti, to, ta. He does equivocate
Ben Jonson. The Alchemist (1610)
---
“He is an eminent gentleman who passes for a great financier in political circles and for a great politician among financiers.” These stories were interchangeable with one about Baron de Rothschild and one about Sir Rufus Israels, who were brought into the conversation in an equivocal manner which might let it be supposed that M. Bloch knew them personally.
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 2]
---
HAMLET. How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.
William Shakespeare. Hamlet
---
A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possession of my soul—and even the idea of suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal.
Edgar Allan Poe. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4: Loss of Breath (1832)
---
if I can see this Mrs. Laura Lyons, of equivocal reputation, a long step will have been made towards clearing one incident in this chain of mysteries.
Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
---
to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my species; especially the Europeans.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
---
the patting of his stomach, the unequivocal praise, the soft emission of gases as he lay in the hamaca, it was music to her ears!
Junot Díaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007)
help with search