Someone who shows ambivalence about a person or thing has conflicting feelings. If you love your mom but find her totally embarrassing you might feel ambivalent about having her give a presentation at your school.
- Pronunciation: /æmˈbɪvələnt/
- English Description: not sure whether you want or like something or not
- Chinese Translation: 矛盾心理(Mao2 Dun4 Xin1 Li3)
- Spanish Translation: Ambivalencia
- STORY: Originally a psychological term, ambivalence was borrowed from the German word Ambivalenz, coined in 1910 by the Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler. The German word was formed from the Latin prefix ambi- "in two ways" plus Latin valentia "vigor, strength."
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
So wretched has Australian politics become that polls conducted by the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank, have regularly shown ambivalence towards democracy itself.BBCApr 30, 2015
I share your ambivalence about the proxy wars being fought by both sides around religious-freedom laws.
P.S: New word description, story and part of "EXAMPLE SENTENCE" are cited in Vocabulary.com