ambivalence

Definitions

1. The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings (such as love and hate) towards a person, object or idea.
   countable, uncountable
2. A state of uncertainty or indecisiveness.
   countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“"I dearly loved my master, son," she said. "You should have⟳ hated him," I said. "He gave me several sons," she said, "and because I loved my sons I learned to love⟳ their father though I hated him too." "I too have⟳ become⟳ acquainted with ambivalence, I said.”

“The great sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argued that philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism both fall⟳ under “allosemitism”: literally Othering the Jew. He defined it not as resentment of what is different, which is xenophobia, but rather of what defies order⟳ and clear categories. In 1997, he wrote, “The Jew is ambivalence incarnate. And ambivalence is ambivalence mostly because it cannot be contemplated without ambivalent feeling: it is simultaneously attractive and repelling.””

CEFR level