disambiguate
verb
dis·am·big·u·ate
ˌdis-am-ˈbi-gyə-ˌwāt 
-gyü-ˌāt
disambiguated; disambiguating; disambiguates
: to clarify (something ambiguous) especially by providing or considering additional information
All health systems possess master patient indexes to disambiguate patient identities …—
Dwight Raum
Dwight Raum"Our eyes encode vast amounts of messy sensory information, and our brain uses clever tricks to disambiguate this information to try and make sense of what it is we are looking at," Dr [Gustav] Kuhn said.—Harry Pettit
Harry Pettit
specifically, linguistics
: to establish a single semantic or grammatical interpretation for (a word, phrase, sentence, etc.)
We argued that when a word is ambiguous, placing it within a specific context often disambiguates it. For example, green in the sentence Give me the green has a very different sense if the sentence is uttered by one speaker holding the other at gunpoint than it does when uttered by an artist gesturing to his assistant. —Genine Lentine and Roger W. Shuy
Genine Lentine and Roger W. Shuy
disambiguation
ˌdis-am-ˌbi-gyə-ˈwā-shən
noun
-gyü-ˈā-
plural disambiguations
Disambiguation is complex in English since … the same word can be a verb, adjective or noun (as with light) with no change in form to provide clues for the program.
—Ross Smith
Ross Smith
Examples of disambiguate in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The number of equally possible parallel syntactic choices are really large, and can only be disambiguated by some form of semantic understanding.
—Gabriel A. Silva, Forbes.com, 23 Apr. 2025
And that’s somehow disambiguated from these ideas of dissociative?
—Quanta Magazine, 6 June 2024
To disambiguate the meaning of animal signals, such as a string of dolphin clicks or whalesong, scientists needed some inkling of where meaning-encoding units began and ended, Reiss explained.
—Sonia Shah, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2023
These are words so often used in computing contexts that not even a regex match pattern written by God could disambiguate all the indexing and search collisions.
—Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum, 5 Sep. 2023
Input from the twitches is used by its software to create different interpretations of what is happening; the software then orders new twitches that might help disambiguate the scenarios.
—Amanda Gefter, The New Yorker, 31 Aug. 2023
This alternative title succinctly and intuitively confers the role of PAs, disambiguates them from assistant physicians, and is concordant with the AAPA’s professional definition.
—Peter A. Young, STAT, 2 June 2023
All health systems possess master patient indexes to disambiguate patient identities, but few extend that identity into external digital health tools.
—Dwight Raum, Forbes, 10 June 2022
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Gabriel A. Silva, Forbes.com, 23 Apr. 2025
And that’s somehow disambiguated from these ideas of dissociative?
—Quanta Magazine, 6 June 2024
To disambiguate the meaning of animal signals, such as a string of dolphin clicks or whalesong, scientists needed some inkling of where meaning-encoding units began and ended, Reiss explained.
—Sonia Shah, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2023
These are words so often used in computing contexts that not even a regex match pattern written by God could disambiguate all the indexing and search collisions.
—Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum, 5 Sep. 2023
Input from the twitches is used by its software to create different interpretations of what is happening; the software then orders new twitches that might help disambiguate the scenarios.
—Amanda Gefter, The New Yorker, 31 Aug. 2023
This alternative title succinctly and intuitively confers the role of PAs, disambiguates them from assistant physicians, and is concordant with the AAPA’s professional definition.
—Peter A. Young, STAT, 2 June 2023
All health systems possess master patient indexes to disambiguate patient identities, but few extend that identity into external digital health tools.
—Dwight Raum, Forbes, 10 June 2022
Cite this Entry
“Disambiguate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disambiguate. Accessed 4 Nov. 2025.
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