Word Study
ambivalence
CIDE DICTIONARY
ambivalence, n.
- mixed feelings or emotions; uncertainty or vacillation in making a choice. [WordNet 1.5]
- the simultaneous existence within a person of both positive and negative feelings toward another person or action, or toward an object (as of attraction and revulsion), resulting in internal conflict. [PJC]
OXFORD DICTIONARY
ambivalence, n. (also ambivalency) the coexistence in one person's mind of opposing feelings, esp. love and hate, in a single context.
Derivative
ambivalent adj. ambivalently adv.
Etymology
G Ambivalenz f. L ambo both, after equivalence, -ency
THESAURUS
ambivalence
Janus, ambiguity, ambitendency, ambivalence of impulse, antinomy, asymmetry, biformity, bifurcation, capriciousness, change of mind, changeableness, conflict, conjugation, decompensation, dichotomy, disproportion, disproportionateness, double-mindedness, doubleness, doublethink, doubling, dualism, duality, dubiety, dubiousness, duplexity, duplication, duplicity, emotional shock, equivocality, equivocation, external frustration, fence-sitting, fence-straddling, fickleness, frustration, halving, heresy, heterodoxy, heterogeneity, incoherence, incommensurability, incompatibility, incongruity, inconsistency, inconsonance, inconstancy, indecision, indecisiveness, infirmity of purpose, instability, irony, irreconcilability, irresolution, mental shock, mercuriality, mugwumpery, mugwumpism, nonconformability, nonconformity, oxymoron, pairing, paradox, polarity, psychological stress, second thoughts, self-contradiction, stress, tergiversation, trauma, traumatism, twinning, two-facedness, twoness, uncertainty, unconformability, unconformity, undecidedness, undeterminedness, unorthodoxy, unsettledness, unsettlementFor further exploring for "ambivalence" in Webster Dictionary Online