obvious
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɑb.vi.əs/
ipa: /ˈɑ.vi.əs/
ipa: /ˈɒ.vɪəs/
ipa: /ˈɒb.vɪəs/
ipa: /ˈɒv.jəs/
Forms: form: more obvious
form: most obvious
Etymology: 16th century, from Latin obvius (“being in the way so as to meet, meeting, easy to access, at hand, ready, obvious”) + -ous, from ob- (“before”) + via (“way”).
Senses: examples: text: Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.
ref: 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
text: During the first year or so of British Railways, some of the simpler and more obvious inter-regional transfers of outlying sections were effected, such as those of the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway from the London Midland Region to the Eastern Region; the South Wales lines of the former L.M.S.R. to the Western Region; the Carlisle-Silloth branch (an L.N.E.R. legacy of a North British "border raid") to the London Midland, and so on.
ref: 1951 April, D. S. Barrie, “British Railways: A Survey, 1948-1950”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 224:
text: One of the most obvious results of the B.R. Modernisation Plan has been the increasing use of diesel and electric traction; a less obvious by-product is the increase in track damage possible with the new forms of traction.
ref: 1961 February, R. K. Evans, “The role of research on British Railways”, in Trains Illustrated, page 92:
text: 'Cause I threw you the obvious / to see what occurs behind / the eyes of a fallen angel / Eyes of a tragedy / Oh well, oh well / Apparently nothing / Apparently nothing at all
ref: 2000, “3 Libras”, performed by A Perfect Circle:
text: It is not obvious, to economists anyway, that cities should exist at all. Crowds of people mean congestion and costly land and labour. But there are also well-known advantages to bunching up. When transport costs are sufficiently high a firm can spend more money shipping goods to clusters of consumers than it saves on cheap land and labour.
ref: 2013 August 17, “Down towns”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8849:
glosses: Easily discovered, seen, or understood; self-explanatory.
Synonyms: word: apparent
word: arrant
word: undoubted
word: glaring
word: bait
word: blatant
word: clear
word: clear as a bell
word: clear as day
word: clear cut
word: crystal clear
word: cut and dried
word: decided
word: elucidate
word: evident
word: eyely
word: intuitive
word: manifest
word: notable
word: noticeable
word: obvious
word: open-and-shut
word: ostensible
word: palpable
word: patent
word: plain
word: plain as a haystack
word: plain as a pikestaff
word: plain as day
word: plain as Dunstable highway
word: plain as porridge
word: plain as print
word: plain as Salisbury
word: plain as the nose on one's face
word: prima facie
topics: legal
law
word: res ipsa loquitur
word: straightforward
word: undissembled
Hyponyms: word: immediate
word: indubitable
word: self-evident
word: undoubtable
word: univocal
Derived terms: Captain Obvious
master of the obvious
non-obvious
nonobvious
obvi
obviosity
obvious by inspection
obviously
obviousness
overobvious
semiobvious
state the obvious
unobvious
Related terms: word: obviate
word: obviously