What's the difference between ambivalent and fickle?

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.

Fickle


Definition:

  • (a.) Not fixed or firm; liable to change; unstable; of a changeable mind; not firm in opinion or purpose; inconstant; capricious; as, Fortune's fickle wheel.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Light testing equipment is fickle by nature, making such units uncommon.
  • (2) Over the last five years in particular, the main parties' opinion poll ratings have been strikingly fickle.
  • (3) This was a risky proposition that depended on the good will of gentrifiers, who are famously fickle.
  • (4) Vinny's fame was quick, fickle and fizzled out a generation ago, hence leaving him quite literally sleeping in a skip, pickled by booze.
  • (5) It is also unthinking because it takes little account of the pending impact of the falling terms of trade and the sluggish domestic economy, which is being held back by chronic weakness in consumer sentiment and fickle business conditions.
  • (6) They were there to record everything from his despair at the fickleness of his recruits, to the distress of his wife Jools at the way the media had invaded their privacy, with scurrilous rumours of infidelity.
  • (7) Bowie wasn't a traditional pop star, happy to be known for one sound or idea then to be discarded by a fickle public.
  • (8) Washington has long been a fan of the petro-dollar and Obama is proving another fickle enthusiast, flirting with the industry one moment, even as he snaps at it the next – like the coquettish mistress of an oil tycoon.
  • (9) Could he build a winner to win over sometimes fickle Miami fans?
  • (10) Raquel Paiva, professor of communications at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said Brazil was a fickle nation that would probably soon forget this humiliation.
  • (11) The digital audience is more fickle: we have multiple subscriptions to magazines and newspapers; we leave a spray of comments on different websites.
  • (12) It is a strange and fickle beast, a flexible friend, dubious and duplicitous, as I was about to find out.
  • (13) How fickle the rest of the country is to forget its history at the expense of cheaper foreign imports.
  • (14) These moves are significant because the above list includes some strongly backed National candidates – especially Goold, who led the Headlong company, and Featherstone – but no recent appointee to another theatre could now express interest in Hytner's job without disqualifying themselves because of the appearance of fickleness.
  • (15) Bernard had become well aware of the fickle ways of Fleet Street and had become canny.
  • (16) At nearly 50, Ross will need to remain in the public eye lest the fickle world of TV starts to forget about him, but there are other ways of staying noticed in the digital era.
  • (17) The Scottish National party has repeatedly claimed that English and Welsh politicians would force Scotland to accept cuts or the loss of the Barnett formula if there was a no vote, accusing Westminster parties of being fickle.
  • (18) While the site is still sizeable it has lost users, business and momentum – extremely dangerous territory for anyone in the fickle internet business.
  • (19) Given the fickle and hypercritical nature of the group, in conceiving Spamalot Idle had to manage his expectations.
  • (20) She experienced something that transcended her pretty fickle and changeable musical allegiances.