to disambiguate
- verb
- /dɪsˈæmbɪɡweɪt/
- Teachers often disambiguate instructions to ensure that all students understand the assignment.
Often times people don't disambiguate those, right?
- Often times people don't disambiguate those, right?
- We don't have good data to disambiguate those two right now.
- First of all, this idea that they can't, that that's that they now here's where disambiguating is the enemy, right?
- But then you can start to then what, try to disambiguate, like what the miss the fact that certain colors are missing, What does that mean?
Examples
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To help your readers, you should always disambiguate the key terms in your writing.
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In legal documents, it is important to disambiguate any vague language to avoid misunderstandings.
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The authors do not disambiguate the various causes of similar outcomes.
Academic text (2014) -
That's how you would disambiguate the sign, right?
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We don't have good data to disambiguate those two right now.
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A major area of research has been exploring the use of identifiers to disambiguate names.
Academic text (2014) -
The first part of the paper develops a framework explaining the need to disambiguate user inquiries to improve information systems and services.
Academic text (2014) -
I'm not convinced disambiguating "efficiency" is what is holding law firms back.
Blog text (1) -
Disambiguating human inquiries, either in a semantic or lexical approach, is an essential process to consider in developing information systems and services.
Academic text (2014) -
The second aspect deals with refining the inquiry scope (reducing search space on the system side) by disambiguating user needs already represented.
Academic text (2014)
Synonyms
To make something easy to understand
To make something clear so others can understand it
To explain something so people understand it
To say something again in different words to make it clearer
Say or write something so people have no doubt
To make something easier to understand by removing mystery or confusion
To explain something clearly in detail
That helps people understand something more clearly
To state something again more clearly
Antonyms
How Clear
Surface Forms
Morphology
disambiguate = ambiguate (semi-transparent) = dis + ambigu + ate
The meaning is fairly inferable as reversing or removing ambiguity from 'ambiguate', but the Latinate pattern is not highly accessible to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Disambiguate comes from the parts dis- 'not' and ambiguous 'unclear or having more than one meaning'. So to disambiguate is to 'make not unclear' — to remove doubt and say something clearly.