While Empson's presumably working definition invokes "ordinary speech," his book deals almost exclusively with an analysis of poetry - hardly anybody's concept of ordinary speech. Nowhere in any of my sources - the third being Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (2008) - were the words "witty" or "deceitful" to be found. For the sake of brevity, let me quote the Concise Oxford English Dictionary:Īmbiguous: having more than one meaning open to different interpretations. None of these sources contradicted my presumed definition of "ambiguous" or "ambiguity," but interestingly and as an aside, the OED actually quotes this very sentence in its section of historical usage. Skipping over "in ordinary speech" for the moment, I was not aware that ambiguity was "as a rule witty or deceitful." This sentence sent me to two different dictionaries and ultimately - when I was at the library the other day anyway - to the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. "An ambiguity, in ordinary speech, means something very pronounced, and as a rule witty or deceitful." I got off to a very rocky start with this book - beginning with the first sentence!
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