A word, phrase, sentence or other communication is called ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way. With regard to single words, the most problematic are those whose various senses express closely related concepts.

“Good”, for example, can mean “useful” or “functional” (That’s a good hammer), “exemplary” (She’s a good student), “pleasing” (This is good soup), “moral” (He is a good person), and probably other similar things.

If I say “I have a good daughter,” can you be sure what I mean exactly? Am I saying she has high ethical principles, or that she’s very popular, or that she’s in good shape physically, or perhaps something else?

Technically speaking, the kind of confusion I want to talk about is not correctly termed ambiguity, but vagueness. Only since most people tend to think of it as ambiguity, I’ll stick to that term. Let’s begin with a simple example.

“I’ll be a little late tonight,” Jack calls out to his wife, Jill, as he picks up his briefcase and heads out the door after breakfast. “Some clients are coming around for a quick meeting on their way home.”

On an average working day, Jack gets home around 6.15. On this night, he makes his appearance at precisely 8.08. Jill is furious; she needed Jack to attend to something important that could have been completed in less than two minutes, but could only be done before eight. Jack just can’t understand what the fuss is about. Didn’t he tell her in advance that he intended to be a little late?

But then, he didn’t mention a specific time frame, did he? To Jack, “a little late” meant one thing; to Jill it meant another.

People see things in different ways. A “carefree” attitude to one person may be “irresponsible” to another. What I call “relaxation”, you may call “laziness”. What’s a “convenience” to you, may be “life-sustaining to your spouse; he or she may call “extravagance” what you view as “essential spending”. The potential for conflict is obvious.

But even where ambiguity doesn’t lead to open conflict, there still can be plenty of room for misunderstanding, confusion and doubt. Consider this scenario:

A usually ravenous teenager sits down at the dinner table. His mother notices he is doing a good job on the potatoes and salad, but is barely touching the chicken.

“Don’t you like the chicken, Jim?” asks a concerned mother.

“Yeah, well, um..ah…”

“Why aren’t you eating it?”

“Well, because it’s white meat and I like dark meat!”

Mother explains that chickens have only two legs and this time his brothers got to them first. Had they been millionaires, she would have bought several chickens, or maybe pre-cut parts. As the reality was, Jim should realize that this was not a five-star hotel….

“It’s okay, Mom, “interrupts Eli. “These potatoes are really good and I won’t drop down dead if I skip the protein for one meal.”

“Quite so, Jim, but by the same token, why don’t you eat the white meat just for once? You’re getting too picky when it comes to food. When I was your age….”

But Jim didn’t hear the rest of the story because something his mother had just said made a bell go off in his head. It was all on account of one sentence he had overheard while she was speaking on the phone a few days previously. He didn’t normally eavesdrop on his mother’s conversations, but he had just happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Jim’s parents had decided to have new kitchen cupboards installed and they had just returned from an excursion to the craftsman’s showroom. His mother was discussing their exciting experience with a good friend on the phone.

“There were so many different styles on the floor, and about a dozen different shades of wood to choose from,” she had said. “I just couldn’t make up my mind. My husband got really impatient and said I was too picky. I told him that wasn’t being picky – I was merely making a ‘preference analysis.’ ”

So when exactly does the (illegitimate) habit of being “picky” become a (legitimate) “preference analysis”? What’s the difference between being choosy with your food and being choosy over a color scheme? Teenagers are pastmasters at spotting ironic inconsistencies. To Jim, this was a glaring example if there ever was one.

We’re all human. Is this kind of situation completely avoidable? I’m not sure.

But certainly, we see here once again how important it is that parents (and teachers) strive to be consistent at all times in all their interactions with their children.