am·phi·bole

(ăm′fə-bōl′)

Any of a large group of structurally similar silicate minerals, such as hornblende, that have a crystalline structure consisting of a double chain of linked SiO₄ units and that contain various combinations of sodium, calcium, magnesium, iron, and aluminum. Several varieties of asbestos are fibrous forms of amphiboles.

[French, from Late Latin amphibolus, ambiguous, from Greek amphibolos, doubtful, from amphiballein, to throw on either side : amphi-, amphi- + ballein, to throw; see g^welə- in Indo-European roots.]

am′phi·bol′ic (-bŏl′ĭk) adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

References in periodicals archive

It is for-itself, and as such, all pre-given frameworks of anthropological understanding and all 'theorizing' concerns have to be suspended in order to (to use one of Roy's trademark amphibolic concepts) 'invent' one or several new ones appropriate to the life-world the ethnographer intends to make intelligible qua itself, i.e., its own self-symbolization.

In Memoriam: Roy Wagner (1938-2018) - An Anthropologist Extraordinaire

Transketolase is a universal amphibolic enzyme catalyzing reactions in the Calvin cycle and the oxidative pentose pathway producing erythrose-4-phosphate, leading to phenylpropanoid metabolism.

Enhanced photosynthesis and carbon metabolism favor arsenic tolerance in Artemisia annua, a medicinal plant as revealed by homology-based proteomics

Accented cinema tends towards a certain style: 'open-form and closed-form visual style; fragmented, multilingual, epistolary, self-reflexive, and critically juxtaposed narrative structure; amphibolic, doubled, crossed, and lost characters; subject matter and themes that involve journeying, historicity, identity, and displacement; dysphoric, euphoric, nostalgic, synaesthetic, liminal, and politicized structures of feeling; interstitial and collective modes of production; and inscription of the biographical, social, and cinematic (dis)location of the filmmakers' (p.

Toronto, Sarcelles to Sodom: Cinema of the Arab Jewish diaspora

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