obscure
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: note: without the pour–poor merger
ipa: /əbˈskjʊə(ɹ)/
note: pour–poor merger
ipa: /əbˈskjɔː(ɹ)/
ipa: /əbˈskjʊɹ/
ipa: /əbˈskjɝ/
rhymes: -ʊə(ɹ)
rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)
rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)
Forms: form: obscurer
form: more obscure
form: obscurest
form: most obscure
Etymology: 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.
Senses: examples: text: I found myself in an obscure wood.
ref: 1892, Denton Jaques Snider, Inferno, 1, 1-2 (originally by Dante Alighieri)
text: His lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs 20:20:
glosses: Dark, faint or indistinct.
examples: text: The obscure bird / Clamoured the livelong night.
ref: c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]:
text: the obscure corners of the earth
ref: 1606, John Davies of Hereford, Bien Venu:
glosses: Hidden, out of sight or inconspicuous.
examples: text: an obscure passage or inscription; The speaker made obscure references to little-known literary works.
text: The lock was of a kind that Watt could not pick. Watt could pick simple locks, but he could not pick obscure locks.
ref: 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC:
text: The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.
ref: 2013 August 3, “The machine of a new soul”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
glosses: Difficult to understand; abstruse.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1996 October 6, William Hathaway, “PARASITE LINKS MEN IN DARING VENTURE”, in Hartford Courant, archived from the original on 28 Nov 2020:
text: i need to be REALLY careful to not use any obscure words. otherwise my tweets might end up on a wiktionary page
ref: 2024 August 4, @rainbowresort_, Twitter, archived from the original on 05 Aug 2024:
glosses: Not well-known.
examples: text: The etymological roots of the word "blizzard" are obscure and open to debate.
glosses: Unknown or uncertain; unclear.
Synonyms: sense: dark
word: cimmerian
word: dingy
sense: faint or indistinct
word: fuzzy
word: ill-defined
sense: hidden, out of sight
word: occluded
word: secluded
sense: difficult to understand
word: fathomless
word: inscrutable
sense: not well-known
word: enigmatic
word: esoteric
word: mysterious
Derived terms: obscurable
obscure honeyeater
obscurely
obscurement
obscureness
obscurification
obscurify
obscurin
obscurism
obscurist
reobscure
semiobscure
subobscure
ultraobscure
unobscurable
unobscure
Related terms: clare-obscure
clear-obscure
obscuration
obscurity