adjective

• Speaking or expressed in riddles; enigmatic.

  ‘the riddling sphinx’

  More example sentences

  • ‘I regarded her as an archeologist might regard the riddling Sphinx.’
  • ‘Knowing that either revealing this secret or pretending not to have solved the riddle will bring about his death, Pericles gives a riddling answer, whereby he warns the King without exposing him.’
  • ‘The key scene is one in which Nathan is forced by Saladin to declare whether Jews, Muslims or Christians represent the true faith: he answers with a riddling fable and a plea for humility before the love of God.’
  • ‘She answers him in a riddling speech: ‘By my troth, I'll tell thee, I am almost sick for one, though I would not have it grow on my chin.’’
  • ‘In this extract one such saying leads in to a series of dynamic and riddling statements in which Jesus draws his disciples into an awareness of his unparalleled relationship with his heavenly Father.’
  • ‘A riddling rattle of brief statements can be offputting.’
  • ‘This is why Parthan's works so often assume the form of the rebus, that riddling amalgam of text and image, title and art-work; to decode the rebus is to access the labyrinth of his work.’
  • ‘Ask him another and he begins to sing in obscure riddling rhymes.’
  • ‘Oates's books often open with a riddling exposition which implies a hidden trauma.’
  • ‘In the evening many families play collective riddling games, which involve men and women of all ages.’
  • ‘They were a very strange folk, with a riddling dialect that made even Levee, no stranger to the art of persuasion, feel intimidated.’
  • ‘The riddling talk between Smaug and the hobbit has its parallel in the dialogue between Fafnir and Sigurd, although that takes place after the death blow has been struck.’
  • ‘A riddling, relentlessly self-reflexive anti-play, this work delegates a huge amount of responsibility to the director.’
  • ‘Lacan's own riddling manner mimics the utterances of the unconscious.’
  • ‘Myshkin is a later, more riddling and more tragic figure of lost absolutes.’
  • ‘Repetitive and riddling, his hypnotic writings were extremely popular in the Syriac Church.’
  • ‘Equally charming and frustrating, the singer also tends to skip around answers to some of the harder questions with riddling, sermon-like replies.’

  Synonyms

  arguable, disputable, questionable, open to question, open to debate, subject to debate, controversial, contentious, doubtful, open to doubt, in doubt, dubious, uncertain, unsure, unclear, vague, borderline, inconclusive, moot, unsettled, unresolved, unconfirmed, undetermined, undecided, unknown, up in the air, not yet established