Ambivalence

Quick meaning: Ambivalence is a noun meaning The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings (such as love and hate) towards a person, object or idea.

Meaning

The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings (such as love and hate) towards a person, object or idea.

More Meanings

1. A state of uncertainty or indecisiveness.

Example Sentences

"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.

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 is ambivalence incarnate. And ambivalence is ambivalence mostly because it cannot be contemplated without ambivalent feeling: it is simultaneously attractive and repelling.”

Word Forms

• ambivalences

Synonyms for ambivalence

Depending on context, synonyms include ambivalency.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include ambivalency, contradiction, ambiguity, dimension, equivocation, uncertainty.

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