What's the difference between ambivalent and equivocal?

Ambivalent


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In doing so they are often supported by their parents who as well assume an ambivalent attitude towards therapy.
  • (2) We interpret this exaggerated positive attitude as an attempt to overcome inner fears, doubts and ambivalences.
  • (3) Partners to the drug-treated mice showed a decrease in the occurrence of offensive ambivalence and of the element "rattle".
  • (4) But also the functionalism does not offer a complete psychological theory: there is an ambivalence concerning the secondary qualities and also concerning intentionality.
  • (5) This component of a more comprehensive study of Houdini focuses on the unusual reification of his family romance fantasies, their endurance well beyond the usual boundaries in time, their kinship with mythological themes, and their infusion with the ambivalence that is often addressed toward the true parents.
  • (6) The whole proves his introversion, ambivalence, hypersensitivity, obstinancy, anxieties, behavioral anomalies, a life rich in fantasies and his underestimation of his own literary work.
  • (7) I thought: this is a country of law and they will help me get my rights.” She is so fond of the child she looked after for 18 months that she feels ambivalent about any possible prosecution of the parents, her ex-employers.
  • (8) It was noted that apart from these two factors, these drinking drivers were equally ambivalent in their attitudes toward alcoholism and the alcoholic when compared to the norm group.
  • (9) They were called 'the give-uppers', 'the clenchers', 'the refocusers' and 'the ambivalents'.
  • (10) Of the 133 pregnancies that ended in childbirth, 59.4% of the mothers felt that the refusal had been completely justified, 24.8% were ambivalent, and 15.8% felt that the refusal had been unjustified.
  • (11) Even many faculty members, including the school's president, Sister Mary Tracy, were ambivalent about the need to let go a competent and popular teacher.
  • (12) Responses of avoidant, ambivalent and controlling groups showed elements of the same organization revealed in reunion behaviour.
  • (13) O'Donnell cautions against adopting an absolute rule of always disclosing everything, and acknowledges the difficulties of coping with patient ambivalence on the issue.
  • (14) The opening lines of Hill's first completed (but second to be published) novel, Fell of Dark (1971), were clearly prophetic: "I possess the Englishman's usual ambivalent attitude to the police.
  • (15) They found, in men: an inability to abandon fertility as lost (with denial of sterility); ambivalence, castration anxiety and a feeling of being excluded from the mother-child symbiosis with later acceptance of loss of fertility and (sometimes excessively) identification with the "mother".
  • (16) Results indicated that psychiatric patients (N = 66): a) viewed both parents more negatively than did members of a matched sample of 66 normal subjects; b) expressed significantly greater ambivalence regarding both parents than did normal subjects; and c) described both parents at a more primitive conceptual level than did normal subjects.
  • (17) The method to overcome the resistance to dental attention due to anguish is to establish a good relation-ship between the dentist and the patient, a good management of the ambivalent feeling of the child and the elimination of the phenomenon of transference.
  • (18) When controlled for sex, additional symptom differences were found for female schizophrenics; blacks were more often excited, ambivalent, rigid and dysphoric.
  • (19) Transsexuals who had not undergone surgery, although it had been offered to them providing they fulfilled the usual requirements, were classified into various subgroups, measured according to their attitude towards sex reassignment surgery: they were transsexuals with an unaltered wish for surgery, transsexuals who were ambivalent towards surgery (hesitating patients), and transsexuals who had relinquished their wish for surgery and lived in the initial gender role.
  • (20) These feelings of ambivalence, emotional instability, and sometimes even hostility toward the surgeon make the male aesthetic patient more of a psychological risk than the female aesthetic patient.

Equivocal


Definition:

  • (a.) (Literally, called equally one thing or the other; hence:) Having two significations equally applicable; capable of double interpretation; of doubtful meaning; ambiguous; uncertain; as, equivocal words; an equivocal sentence.
  • (a.) Capable of being ascribed to different motives, or of signifying opposite feelings, purposes, or characters; deserving to be suspected; as, his actions are equivocal.
  • (a.) Uncertain, as an indication or sign; doubtful.
  • (n.) A word or expression capable of different meanings; an ambiguous term; an equivoque.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) However six equivocal studies were observed in profoundly jaundiced patients with bilirubin levels above 400 mumol l-1 due to difficulties in differentiating extrahepatic obstruction from severe intrahepatic cholestasis.
  • (2) The great clinical value of the procedure is shown by the following findings:X-ray-negative lesions--including 2 cases of carcinoma--were found in 35 percent of the cases, radiologically demonstrated lesions could be defined more precisely in 18 percent, and the presence of colonic lesions could be ruled out in 11 percent in spite of equivocal X-ray findings.
  • (3) Differentiation of thrombi from slow flow in the pulmonary arteries, sometimes observed in the presence of pulmonary arterial hypertension, can be equivocal.
  • (4) Conversely, the presence of unchanged intracellular or intraluminal O-acetyl sialic acid may help to exclude a diagnosis of malignancy in equivocal cases.
  • (5) Interpretation of scans was equivocal in another 18% of patients due to undetectable ascension of the tracer to the uterus.
  • (6) Endpoint events were also more common in patients with an abnormal (positive or equivocal) preoperative exercise test response than in those with a negative response (27% vs 14%); however, preoperative exercise results were not statistically significant independent predictors of cardiac risk.
  • (7) Radiographic appearances of tumours of the paranasal sinus are often equivocal.
  • (8) Of these 65 donors, 46 had normal studies, nine had pericardial effusions, five had mild septal hypokinesia with otherwise normal function, four had equivocal mitral valve prolapse, and only one heart could not be visualized.
  • (9) Different procurement systems have already made England a slightly "different country" for Scottish suppliers, many of whom are more concerned about Cameron's equivocal attitude towards the European Union.
  • (10) Tumor rates are given for each positive or equivocal effect observed in 67 studies judged to show carcinogenic effects and in the 17 studies that show equivocal effects.
  • (11) Conflicting and equivocal data have characterized self-reports of depression and other affects in alcoholics.
  • (12) None of the lesions with histologic features equivocal for HPV infection had detectable HPV DNA by in situ hybridization, though some did contain HPV DNA sequences as ascertained by filter hybridization analysis.
  • (13) While it is unlikely that Zardari's government had any direct link to the Mumbai attacks, there is every reason to believe that its failure effectively to crack down on the country's jihadi network, and its equivocation with figures such as Hafiz Muhammad Syed, means that atrocities of the kind we saw last week are likely to continue.
  • (14) Avascular lesions were the main cause for equivocal or incorrect angiographic diagnoses.
  • (15) A regular histologic examination was equivocal for evidence of HPV infection in four of the seven cases.
  • (16) No changes in regional contractility occurred with propranolol except for a minimal increase in hypokinesis in one patient at each dosage and equivocal development of a new area of slight hypokinesis in one patient and minimal apex of dyskinesis in another at the higher dosage.
  • (17) Enterobacteriaceae that yield zones of inhibition equal to or greater than 20 mm in diameter around 50-mug discs of carbenicillin are designated as sensitive to the drug; isolates that yield zones measuring from 18 to 19 mm in diameter are reported as of equivocal (intermediate) susceptibility to the drug, whereas those enterobacterial isolates that are characterized by zones of inhibition of 17 mm or less in diameter are interpreted as resistant to carbenicillin.
  • (18) Of the 47 compounds that were positive or equivocal in the alkaline unwinding assay, only carbon tetrachloride and prednisolone were negative in the mouse lymphoma assay, while 12 of the 19 compounds that were negative in the alkaline unwinding assay were positive in the mouse lymphoma assay.
  • (19) Cavernography should be used in the equivocal cases without hematuria or signs of fracture.
  • (20) It was observed that 2,4-D, dimecron, and vitavax were clastogenic, but the results obtained with benomyl and monocrotophos were equivocal.