Definition of "ambage" []

• Archaic Ambiguity. Often used in the plural. (noun)
• Archaic Winding ways or indirect proceedings. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "[Sidenote: _Periphrasis_, or the Figure of ambage.]"
• "And ye shall know that we may dissemble, I meane speake otherwise then we thinke, in earnest as well as in sport, vnder couert and darke termes, and in learned and apparant speaches, in short sentences, and by long ambage and circumstance of wordes, and finally aswell when we lye as when we tell truth."
• "Its origin is involved in obscurity: but may it not be a corruption of the Latin _ambages_, or the singular ablative _ambage_? which signifies _quibbling, subterfuge_, and that kind of conduct which is generally supposed to constitute _humbug_."