Today's Word "Amphiboly"
Published in Vocabulary
amphiboly \aem-FI-beh-li\ (noun) - 1 : A phrase that is ambiguous because of its syntactic structure; 2 : any ambivalent or ambiguous phrase.
Groucho Marx was the master of amphibolies, ambivalence, and equivocation such as, "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know."
Today's is another word borrowed via French from Late Latin, this time from amphibolus "ambiguous." The Latin word is Greek amphibolos "doubtful," thinly disguised. It is the adjective from amphiballein "to throw on either side," based on amphi- "both" + ballein "to throw." "Ballein" comes from Proto-Indo-European *gwel- "to throw, pierce," the stem underlying Old English cwellan and cyllan "to kill." The first of these is today's "quell" while the last is "kill." Greek ballizein "to dance," the origin of English "ball," the dance, derives from the same stem. Despite the meaning of the original stem and the fact that one can throw both types of ball, the word for the ball you throw and catch is unrelated.
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