Obfuscate
adj, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 To make dark; to overshadow.
- 2 make obscure or unclear wordnet
- 3 To deliberately make more confusing in order to conceal the truth.
"obfuscate facts"
- 4 To alter code while preserving its behavior but concealing its structure and intent.
"We need to obfuscate these classes before we ship the final release."
- 1 Obfuscated; darkened; obscured. obsolete
"Also the vertues beynge in a cruell persone be nat only obfuscate or hyd : But also lyke wyse as norysshynge meates and drynkes in an sycke body"
Example
More examples"Don't obfuscate the reality of what happened in the Holocaust by drawing exaggerated comparisons."
Etymology
The adjective is first attested in 1487, in Middle English, the verb in 1536; either borrowed from Middle French obfusquer, offusquer, from Old French offusquer, or directly from Late Latin obfuscātus, offuscātus, the perfect passive participle of obfuscō, offuscō (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from Latin ob- + fuscō (“to darken”). Doublet of dusken (“to darken, make obscure”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.