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say it: uhb-SKYUUR
obscure is an adjective and verb meaning "not clearly expressed or understood". It is pronounced /əbˈskjʊɹ/ — uhb-SKYUUR. It carries 11 recorded senses.
not clearly expressed or understood
“an obscure turn of phrase”
“an impulse to go off and fight certain obscure battles of his own spirit”
“their descriptions of human behavior become vague, dull, and unclear”
“vague...forms of speech...have so long passed for mysteries of science”
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”
not drawing attention
“an unnoticeable cigarette burn on the carpet”
“an obscure flaw”
remote and separate physically or socially
“existed over the centuries as a world apart”
“preserved because they inhabited a place apart”
“tiny isolated villages remote from centers of civilization”
“an obscure village”
make less visible or unclear
“The stars are obscured by the clouds”
“the big elm tree obscures our view of the valley”
make unclear, indistinct, or blurred
“Her remarks confused the debate”
“Their words obnubilate their intentions”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for obscure come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.