unambiguous
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of unambiguous
Explanation
If something is unambiguous, there are no two ways to interpret it. If your girlfriend burns all your letters, texts you that she hates you, and moves a thousand miles away, the unambiguous message is that she’s finished with you. If you're nervously reading the manual on how to trap the rattlesnake that's hiding under your bed, you'd hope the instructions would be unambiguous and tell you very clearly what to do. The word unambiguous gets its meaning from un-, meaning "not," combined with the Latin -ambi-, meaning "both ways," and -agere, meaning "to drive." So unambiguous is not driving in two directions — it's going full speed ahead, in just one direction, with only one meaning.
Vocabulary lists containing unambiguous
Power Prefix: un-
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Now I See! Synonyms for "Clear"
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Invisible Man
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The FAA's review board reached this conclusion about the software bug's safety "because pilots retain full control of the aircraft and the indications to the flight crew are clear and unambiguous."
From Barron's ● Oct. 3, 2026
Yet they took unambiguous stances in favor of Macklemore’s Palestinian advocacy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
The relationship is biologically coherent, the effect sizes are clinically meaningful, and the dose-response is unambiguous: more light, worse outcomes.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 11, 2026
Even if the movie never scales to a technical profit, it is by any account an unambiguous success.
From Slate ● Sep. 1, 2026
But it would have been better to rewrite the sentence to convey the contrast from the start, using an unambiguous connective such as alternatively.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
