EQUIVOCAL TERMS OR WORDS, among logicians, are those which have a doubtful or double meaning.
According to Mr Locke, the doubtfulness or uncertainty of words has its cause more in the ideas themselves, than in any incapacity of the words to signify them; and might be avoided, would people always use the same term to denote the same idea or collection of ideas: but, adds he, it is hard to find a discourse on any subject where this is the case; a practice which can only be imputed to folly or great dishonesty; since a man, in making up his accounts, might with as much fairness use the numerical characters sometimes for one sometimes for another collection of units.