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Stenka25 Posted 5 years ago
Vocabulary

The meaning of ‘with arrows arrayed around lurking ambiguity’

The meaning of ‘with arrows arrayed around lurking ambiguity


The passage below is from Fathoms: The World in the Whale Hardcover by Rebecca Giggs.


I have dipped into these groups online. They have names like ‘Things in the Thames’ and ‘UMOs: Unidentified Marine Objects’. Some members identify themselves as cryptozoologists —self-taught scientists of the secret animals. The mode of forum discussion veers wildly between anti-authoritarian cynicism and credulous belief. Conversation tends technocratic, though a cold edge of self-sufficient pragmatism frequently shows through; this is the mentality of frontiersmen, eschewing bookish knowledge for sense. What the cryptozoologists feel driven to investigate, broadly, are suspicious peripheries. Creatures on the edges of being known. Blurs that elude the camera. In the digital age, these conspiracies are catalysed not by the absence of information but by a surplus of it, siphoned by algorithms and boosted towards the erasure, disaggregation, and distrust of expertise. Images are posted lightened, colour-shifted, zoomed into a haze of pixellation, or with arrows arrayed around lurking ambiguity. The firsthand reports of hunters, trackers, and experienced game fishers get kudos. More than once, someone submits that what others deem ‘monsters’ would be well-known animals today if ordinary citizens were not so alienated from nature — if city-folk could even tell what the hell they were looking at.


I have a problem of visualizing the bold-faced phrase.

I think I know the literal meaning of each words of the phrase, but still I cannot view it clearly. But let me explain what I have in mind now. This phrase shows me someone manipulates some image to his taste, so he put a few arrows around hidden ambiguous parts so that people cannot see what he doesn’t want to be seen.

Am I right?

Thanks in advance.

  

Top answer

"lurking ambiguity" refers to something not clearly identifiable in a photo, such as a fuzzy shape. The "arrows arrayed" part means that someone has added arrow(s) pointing to the unidentified object, in order to show where it is located.

  • "lurking ambiguity" refers to something not clearly identifiable in a photo, such as a fuzzy shape.
  • The "arrows arrayed" part means that someone has added arrow(s) pointing to the unidentified object, in order to show where it is located.
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1 Answers
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"lurking ambiguity" refers to something not clearly identifiable in a photo, such as a fuzzy shape. The "arrows arrayed" part means that someone has added arrow(s) pointing to the unidentified object, in order to show where it is located.

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