How to Use ambivalence in a Sentence

ambivalence

noun
Definition of ambivalencenext
  • That was something that changed me: seeing the ambivalence, the doubt and the relief all in the same household.
    — Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY, 25 Nov. 2020
  • The most famous male pop star of the past decade is burdened by a similar ambivalence about success.
    — Star Tribune, 24 Dec. 2020
  • Mideast allies may look at Biden’s victory with some ambivalence.
    — David Wainer, Bloomberg.com, 8 Nov. 2020
  • The movies don’t so much reflect public ambivalence about their power as actively promote it.
    — New York Times, 3 Dec. 2020
  • For much of this electoral ambivalence, thank America’s suburbs.
    — Luke Thompson, National Review, 12 Nov. 2020
  • One imagines Webber regarding this with some ambivalence.
    — New York Times, 21 Oct. 2020
  • That illustrates, if not arbitrariness, at least ambivalence.
    — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 26 Dec. 2020
  • Several polls have shown the ambivalence surrounding the vaccine among minorities.
    — Nada Hassanein, USA TODAY, 14 Dec. 2020
  • So many in the Seattle scene, especially, seemed to have ambivalence about and perhaps even a disdain for commercial success.
    — Gary Graff, cleveland, 30 Nov. 2020
  • If our sympathy for Ripley has deepened over time, so, perhaps, has our ambivalence about his author, though her literary star has, quite rightly, only risen in the decades since her death.
    — Megan O’Grady, New York Times, 12 Nov. 2020
  • John Bean, owner of the former station at 4501 Hiawatha Av., expressed ambivalence.
    — Randy Furst, Star Tribune, 6 Dec. 2020
  • This kind of ambivalence is all over Meet Me by the Fountain.
    — Kristen Martin, The Atlantic, 21 June 2022
  • Parton is not the first artist to express ambivalence about the Hall of Fame.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 17 Mar. 2022
  • All the emotion attached to this ambivalence — the love, the pain, the humor, the all-of-it — is fleeting, like a bite mark.
    — Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 9 Feb. 2022
  • The key to the mythic mode, asserts Ball, is ambivalence.
    — Washington Post, 18 Aug. 2021
  • Post talks about getting back on the road with some ambivalence.
    — Lyndsey Havens, Billboard, 26 Jan. 2022
  • My ambivalence comes because of the finiteness of the end of the shortest month on the calendar.
    — Marshall Shepherd, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2021
  • This creates a new task for the coachee called ambivalence handling.
    — Cristian Hofmann, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2023
  • The greatest challenge facing the U.S. may be the ambivalence of many of Asia’s leaders.
    — Michael Schuman, The Atlantic, 29 Aug. 2022
  • But what's the real cost of this ambivalence toward work?
    — Melissa Houston, Forbes, 23 Feb. 2024
  • Up and down the state, there was little ambivalence for Elder, just love or hate.
    — Los Angeles Times, 14 Sep. 2021
  • That ambivalence isn’t a mistake or a by-product — it’s the subject of the show itself.
    — Helen Shaw, Vulture, 27 May 2021
  • The song is a very honest display of that ambivalence, anger and sadness.
    — Jonathan Cohen, Variety, 8 Feb. 2022
  • The shifting margin of sea and land, often lit by the moon, held a lure for Edward Lear, a tidal ambivalence.
    — Jenny Uglow, The New York Review of Books, 8 Sep. 2022
  • My colleague Melissa Gomez spoke to a host of teens about their ambivalence.
    — Amina Khan Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2021
  • The best episodes are about the ambivalence Luis, Julio, and the rest of their family have toward tradition.
    — Nicole Froio, refinery29.com, 31 Oct. 2022
  • Stark, who is known for her subversive takes on corsetry, confronts that ambivalence head-on in The Tour.
    — Frances Solá-Santiago, refinery29.com, 28 Sep. 2023
  • Still, ambivalence about renaming Fort Bragg, the largest base in the nation, runs deep.
    — The New York Times, Arkansas Online, 3 Oct. 2021
  • Mitski has talked about her own ambivalence with fame and celebrity.
    — Julyssa Lopez, Rolling Stone, 11 Sep. 2024
  • Readers and educators expressed ambivalence about reading or teaching Munro again.
    — Yiyun Li, Harper's Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ambivalence.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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