ambivalent
Americanadjective
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having mixed feelings about someone or something; being unable to choose between two (usually opposing) courses of action.
The whole family was ambivalent about the move to the suburbs.
She is regarded as a morally ambivalent character in the play.
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Psychology. of or relating to the coexistence within an individual of positive and negative feelings toward the same person, object, or action, simultaneously drawing that individual in opposite directions.
Other Word Forms
- ambivalently adverb
Etymology
Origin of ambivalent
Back formation from ambivalence
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.
Spectators were mostly barred, and an ambivalent nation watched the competition on television.
From New York Times
“I can’t be ambivalent about the sets of decisions that brought them into my life because I love them too much.”
From New York Times
To feel non-belonging is to feel either ignored, ostracized, or ambivalent about being accepted and connected.
From Washington Post
He’s the no-thirst candidate ambivalently lumbering toward his third consecutive MVP award while loathing the invitation to be part of this year’s conversation.
From Washington Post
Of those 2,293 reviews I have published, here are five — positive, negative and ambivalent, in chronological order — that together capture something about the movies and my relationship to them over the past 23 years.
From New York Times
Definitions 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.
