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Dictionary:

equivocation

  (ĭ-kwĭv'ə-kā'shən) pronunciation
n.
  1. The use of equivocal language.
  2. An equivocal statement or expression.

 
 
Thesaurus: equivocation

noun

  1. The use or an instance of equivocal language: ambiguity, equivoque, euphemism, hedge, prevarication, shuffle, tergiversation, weasel word. Informal waffle. See clear/unclear.
  2. An expression or term liable to more than one interpretation: ambiguity, double-entendre, equivocality, equivoque, tergiversation. See clear/unclear.

 
Antonyms: equivocation

n

Definition: avoidance of an issue
Antonyms: directness, facing, meeting


 
WordNet: equivocation
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has 3 meanings:

Meaning #1: a statement that is not literally false but that cleverly avoids an unpleasant truth
  Synonym: evasion

Meaning #2: intentionally vague or ambiguous
  Synonyms: prevarication, evasiveness

Meaning #3: falsification by means of vague or ambiguous language
  Synonym: tergiversation


 
Wikipedia: equivocation

Equivocation, also known as amphibology, is classified as both a formal and informal fallacy. It is the misleading use of a word with more than one meaning (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time).

Examples

Equivocation is the use in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time. For example:

A feather is light.
What is light cannot be dark.
Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

In this use of equivocation, the word "light" is first used as the opposite of "heavy", but then used as a synonym of "bright" (the fallacy usually becomes obvious as soon as one tries to translate this argument into another language). Because the "middle term" of this syllogism is NOT one term, but two separate ones masquerading as one (all feathers are indeed "not heavy", but is NOT true that all feathers are "not bright"), equivocation is actually a kind of the fallacy of four terms.

The fallacy of equivocation is often used with words that have a strong emotional content and many meanings. These meanings often coincide within proper context, but the fallacious arguer does a semantic shift, slowly changing the context as they go in such a way to achieve equivocation by treating distinct meanings of the word as equivalent.

In English language, one equivocation is with the word "man", which can mean both "member of species Homo sapiens" and "male member of species Homo sapiens". A well-known equivocation is

"Do women need to worry about man-eating sharks?"

where "man-eating" is taken as "devouring only male human beings".

A separate case of equivocation is metaphor:

A Jackass is a male member of the species Equus asinus
All Jackasses have long ears
Karl is a jackass
Therefore, Karl has long ears

Here the equivocation is the metaphorical use of "jackass" to imply a stupid or obnoxious person instead of a male ass.

Margarine is better than nothing
Nothing is better than butter
Therefore margarine is better than butter

This equivocation exploits two different meanings of the word "nothing" to come to an apparent conclusion about the relative merits of two different things without actually making reference to any of their respective merits. In the first statement, "nothing" really means "dry bread" (such that the sentence means "it is preferable to have margarine [on bread] than nothing at all"), whereas in the second, it means, literally, "no thing" (so the sentence means "there exists no thing that is better than butter").

Specific types of equivocation fallacies

See main articles: False attribution, Fallacy of quoting out of context, Loki's Wager and No true Scotsman.

References

  • F.L. Huntley. "Some Notes on Equivocation: Comment", PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Vol. 81, No 1, (March 1966), p.146.
  • A.E. Malloch. "Some Notes on Equivocation", PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Vol. 81, No 1, (March 1966), pp 145–146.

External links

See also



 
 

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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Answers Corporation Antonyms. © 1999-2008 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Equivocation" Read more

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