Obscure

8 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Obscure \Ob*scure"\ ([o^]b*sk[=u]r"), a. [Compar. {Obscurer}
     ([o^]b*sk[=u]r"[~e]r); superl. {Obscurest}.] [L. obscurus,
     orig., covered; ob- (see {Ob-}) + a root probably meaning, to
     cover; cf. L. scutum shield, Skr. sku to cover: cf. F.
     obscur. Cf. {Sky}.]
     [1913 Webster]


     1. Covered over, shaded, or darkened; destitute of light;
        imperfectly illuminated; dusky; dim.
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              His lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.
                                                    --Prov. xx.
                                                    20.
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     2. Of or pertaining to darkness or night; inconspicuous to
        the sight; indistinctly seen; hidden; retired; remote from
        observation; unnoticed.
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              The obscure bird
              Clamored the livelong night.          --Shak.
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              The obscure corners of the earth.     --Sir J.
                                                    Davies.
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     3. Not noticeable; humble; mean. "O base and obscure vulgar."
        --Shak. "An obscure person." --Atterbury.
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     4. Not easily understood; not clear or legible; abstruse or
        incomprehensible; as, an obscure passage or inscription.
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     5. Not clear, full, or distinct; clouded; imperfect; as, an
        obscure view of remote objects.
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     {Obscure rays} (Opt.), those rays which are not luminous or
        visible, and which in the spectrum are beyond the limits
        of the visible portion.
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     Syn: Dark; dim; darksome; dusky; shadowy; misty; abstruse;
          intricate; difficult; mysterious; retired; unnoticed;
          unknown; humble; mean; indistinct.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Obscure \Ob*scure"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Obscured}
     ([o^]b*sk[=u]rd"); p. pr. & vb. n. {Obscuring}.] [L.
     obscurare, fr. obscurus: cf. OF. obscurer. See {Obscure}, a.]
     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.
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           They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne's oak, with
           obscured lights.                         --Shak.
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           Why, 't is an office of discovery, love,
           And I should be obscured.                --Shak.
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           There is scarce any duty which has been so obscured by
           the writings of learned men as this.     --Wake.
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           And seest not sin obscures thy godlike frame? --Dryden.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Obscure \Ob*scure"\ ([o^]b*sk[=u]r"), v. i.
     To conceal one's self; to hide; to keep dark. [Obs.]
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           How! There's bad news.
           I must obscure, and hear it.             --Beau. & Fl.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Obscure \Ob*scure"\, n.
     Obscurity. [Obs.] --Milton.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  obscure
       adj 1: not clearly understood or expressed; "an obscure turn of
              phrase"; "an impulse to go off and fight certain
              obscure battles of his own spirit"-Anatole Broyard;
              "their descriptions of human behavior become vague,
              dull, and unclear"- P.A.Sorokin; "vague...forms of
              speech...have so long passed for mysteries of
              science"- John Locke [syn: {vague}]
       2: marked by difficulty of style or expression; "much that was
          dark is now quite clear to me"; "those who do not
          appreciate Kafka's work say his style is obscure" [syn: {dark}]
       3: difficult to find; "hidden valleys"; "a hidden cave"; "an
          obscure retreat" [syn: {hidden}]
       4: not famous or acclaimed; "an obscure family"; "unsung heroes
          of the war" [syn: {unknown}, {unsung}]
       5: not drawing attention; "an unnoticeable cigarette burn on
          the carpet"; "an obscure flaw" [syn: {unnoticeable}]
       6: remote and separate physically or socially; "existed over
          the centuries as a world apart"; "preserved because they
          inhabited a place apart"- W.H.Hudson; "tiny isolated
          villages remote from centers of civilization"; "an obscure
          village" [syn: {apart(p)}, {isolated}]
       v 1: make less visible or unclear; "The stars are obscured by the
            clouds" [syn: {befog}, {becloud}, {obnubilate}, {haze
            over}, {fog}, {cloud}, {mist}]
       2: make unclear, indistinct, or blurred; "Her remarks confused
          the debate"; "Their words obnubilate their intentions"
          [syn: {confuse}, {blur}, {obnubilate}]
       3: make obscure or unclear; "The distinction was obscured"
          [syn: {bedim}, {overcloud}]
       4: make undecipherable or imperceptible by obscuring or
          concealing; "a hidden message"; "a veiled threat" [syn: {blot
          out}, {obliterate}, {veil}, {hide}]
       5: make difficult to perceive by sight; "The foliage of the
          huge tree obscures the view of the lake" [syn: {benight},
          {bedim}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  420 Moby Thesaurus words for "obscure":
     Cimmerian, abstruse, adiaphanous, adumbrate, aleatoric, aleatory,
     ambiguous, amorphic, amorphous, amphibological, anarchic,
     anonymous, apply to, arcane, around the bush, back of beyond,
     baffling, baggy, bandage, beamless, beat about, becloud, beclouded,
     bedarken, bedazzle, bedim, befog, befogged, beg the question,
     begloom, belie, bemist, benight, beyond one, bicker, black,
     black as night, black out, blacken, blanket, blear, bleared,
     bleary, blind, blind the eyes, blindfold, blobby, block,
     block the light, blot out, blur, blurred, blurry, boggle, broad,
     brown, buried, caliginous, camouflage, canopy, cast a shadow,
     cavil, chance, chancy, chaotic, characterless, choplogic,
     clabber up, clear as mud, cloak, close, clothe, cloud, cloud over,
     cloud up, clouded, cloudy, complex, complicate, complicated,
     conceal, concealed, confuse, confused, confusing, cope, corrupt,
     cover, cover up, covered, covert, cowl, crabbed, cramp, cryptic,
     curtain, dark, dark as night, dark as pitch, darken, darken over,
     darkling, darksome, daze, dazzle, deform, deprive of sight,
     devious, difficult, dim, dim out, disguise, dismal, disorder,
     disordered, disorderly, dissemble, distant, distort,
     distract attention from, dodge, double-edged, double-faced,
     doubtful, dubious, dull, dusk, dusky, ebon, ebony, eclipse,
     eclipsed, encloud, encompass with shadow, enigmatic, enmist,
     ensconce, enshroud, envelop, equivocal, equivocate, esoteric,
     evade, evade the issue, excecate, faint, falsify, far, far-off,
     featureless, feeble, fence, film, filmy, fog, fog up, foggy,
     foreign, formless, fuliginous, fuzz, fuzzy, garble, garbled,
     general, glare, gloom, gloomy, gloss over, gouge, grumly,
     half-seen, half-visible, hard, hard to understand, haze, hazy,
     hedge, hid, hidden, hide, hit-or-miss, hood, hoodwink, humble,
     ignotus, ill-defined, illegible, impervious to light, imprecise,
     in a cloud, in a fog, in eclipse, in purdah, in the wings,
     inaccessible, inaccurate, inchoate, incoherent, incommunicado,
     incomprehensible, inconclusive, inconsequential, inconspicuous,
     indecisive, indefinable, indefinite, indeterminable, indeterminate,
     indistinct, indistinguishable, inexact, inexplicable, inform,
     inglorious, inscrutable, insignificant, intransparent, intricate,
     jumble, jumbled, kaleidoscopic, keep from, keep under cover,
     knotty, latent, lax, lay on, lay over, little known, lonesome,
     loose, low-profile, lowly, lumpen, make blind, make uncertain,
     make unintelligible, mantle, mask, mean, merely glimpsed, mess up,
     minor, misadvise, misdirect, miseducate, misguide, misinform,
     misinstruct, mislead, misrepresent, mist, misteach, misty, muddle,
     muddy, muffle, murk, murky, mysterious, mystic, mystical, mystify,
     mystifying, nameless, nebulous, night-black, night-clad,
     night-cloaked, night-dark, night-enshrouded, night-filled,
     night-mantled, night-veiled, nitpick, no credit to, nondescript,
     nonspecific, nubilate, nubilous, obduce, obfuscate, obfuscated,
     obnubilate, obscured, obumbrate, occult, occultate, occulted, odd,
     opaque, orderless, out of focus, out-of-the-way, overcast,
     overcloud, overlay, overshadow, oversmoke, overspread,
     overtechnical, pale, palter, parry, perplexed, perplexing, pervert,
     pick nits, pitch-black, pitch-dark, pitchy, prevaricate, pussyfoot,
     put on, puzzling, quibble, random, rayless, recondite, remote,
     removed, renownless, retired, roiled, roily, scramble, scrambled,
     screen, scum, secluded, secluse, secret, semivisible, sequestered,
     shade, shadow, shadowed forth, shadowy, shady, shapeless, shield,
     shift, shroud, shuffle, shy, sidestep, slur over, smog, smoke,
     snow-blind, solitary, somber, split hairs, spread over, starless,
     stochastic, strange, strike blind, subfusc, sunless, superimpose,
     superpose, sweeping, tenebrious, tenebrose, tenebrous,
     tergiversate, tough, transcendent, turbid, umbral, uncelebrated,
     uncertain, unclear, undefined, under an eclipse, under cover,
     under house arrest, under wraps, underground, undestined,
     undetermined, undistinguished, unemphatic, unfamed, unfamiliar,
     unfathomable, unform, unglorified, unheard-of, unhonored,
     unilluminated, unimportant, unintelligible, unknown, unlighted,
     unlit, unnamed, unnotable, unnoted, unnoticeable, unnoticed,
     unordered, unorganized, unplain, unpopular, unrecognizable,
     unremarked, unrenowned, unshape, unspecified, unsung, vague,
     varnish, veil, veiled, weak, whitewash, wrapped in clouds
  
  

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  obscure adj. Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply
     total incomprehensibility. "The reason for that last crash is obscure."
     "The `find(1)' command's syntax is obscure!" The phrase `moderately
     obscure' implies that something could be figured out but probably isn't
     worth the trouble. The construction `obscure in the extreme' is the
     preferred emphatic form.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  OBSCURE
       
          "A Formal Description of the Specification Language OBSCURE",
          J.  Loeckx, TR A85/15, U Saarlandes, Saarbrucken, 1985.
       
          [{Jargon File}]