amphiboly

From Old French amphibolie, from Latin amphibolia, from Ancient Greek ἀμφιβολία (amphibolía, “ambiguity”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /amˈfɪbəli/

amphiboly (countable and uncountable, plural amphibolies)

1. (grammar) An ambiguous grammatical construction.
   • 1931, Adrian Coates, "Philosophy as Criticism and Point of View," Philosophy, vol. 6, no. 23, p. 339,

     By logical errors I mean such simple things as Equivocation, Amphiboly, and Begging the Question.

   • 1987, Jeffrey Buechner, "Radically Misinterpreting Radical Interpretation," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 45, no. 4, p. 410,

     The language might be fraught with word ambiguity or sentence amphiboly.

• Strictly speaking, in an amphiboly the individual words are unambiguous; the ambiguity results entirely from the linguistic manner in which they have been combined. [1]

• amphibology

• equivocation

• ambophily