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Obscure

//əbˈskjʊə(ɹ)// adj, verb

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Dark, faint or indistinct.

    "I found myself in an obscure wood."

  2. 2
    Hidden, out of sight or inconspicuous.

    "The obscure bird / Clamoured the livelong night."

  3. 3
    Difficult to understand; abstruse.

    "an obscure passage or inscription; The speaker made obscure references to little-known literary works."

  4. 4
    Not well-known.

    "Of all the medical monsters Peter Hotez could have set out to slay, the Yale University researcher could not have chosen a more wily and obscure villain than the hookworm."

  5. 5
    Unknown or uncertain; unclear.

    "The etymological roots of the word "blizzard" are obscure and open to debate."

Adjective
  1. 1
    not clearly expressed or understood wordnet
  2. 2
    marked by difficulty of style or expression wordnet
  3. 3
    remote and separate physically or socially wordnet
  4. 4
    not drawing attention wordnet
  5. 5
    not famous or acclaimed wordnet
Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    difficult to find wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To render obscure; to darken; to make dim; to keep in the dark; to hide; to make less visible, intelligible, legible, glorious, beautiful, or illustrious. transitive

    "They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne's oak, with obscured lights."

  2. 2
    make unintelligible or unclear wordnet
  3. 3
    To hide, put out of sight etc. transitive

    "It has been little altered over the years save for the addition of a platform awning which rather obscures the arcaded entrance to the booking hall."

  4. 4
    make undecipherable or imperceptible by obscuring or concealing wordnet
  5. 5
    To conceal oneself; to hide. intransitive, obsolete

    "How! There's bad news. / I must obscure, and hear it."

Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    reduce a vowel to a neutral one, such as a schwa wordnet
  2. 7
    make unclear, indistinct, or blurred wordnet
  3. 8
    make less visible or unclear wordnet

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English obscure, from Old French obscur, from Latin obscūrus (“dark, dusky, indistinct”), from ob- + *scūrus, from Proto-Italic *skoiros, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₃-. Doublet of oscuro.

Etymology 2

From Middle English obscure, from Old French obscur, from Latin obscūrus (“dark, dusky, indistinct”), from ob- + *scūrus, from Proto-Italic *skoiros, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₃-. Doublet of oscuro.

See also for "obscure"

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