obscure1 adjectiveobscure2 verb
obscureob‧scure1 /əbˈskjʊə $ -ˈskjʊr/ ●○○ adjective 
WORD ORIGINobscure1
Origin:
1300-1400 Old French, Latin obscurusEXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- obscure regulations
- an obscure Flemish painter
- Best's art is eccentric and obscure.
- He's using an obscure old law to try to stop the new road being built.
- Picasso's first exhibition received only a short mention in an obscure Parisian newspaper.
- Publishers would not print his earlier poetry because they felt it was too obscure.
- The connection between the studies is somewhat obscure.
- The lines were written by an obscure English poet named Mordaunt.
- The Silver Apples are one of those obscure bands that you might hear about, but never actually hear.
- About the most obscure thing touted is the fountain in Fountain Hills.
- Each sprang from the obscure underside of the society.
- It was satisfying to send away and get this obscure stuff in the mail.
- Laurence Hurst has pursued an obscure hint of a gender-altering parasite among human beings.
- The proposed arrangements however are rather obscure.
- You're not expected to input anything too obscure though, so frustrations in this respect are kept to a minimum.
Longman Language Activatornot famous
not at all famous: · As an unknown author, it isn't easy to get your work published.· Horn was beaten by a relatively unknown politician in the last election.
someone or something that is obscure is known about only by a few people, because they belong to a group, place, or subject that not many people know about or are interested in: · He's using an obscure old law to try to stop the new road being built.· The lines were written by an obscure English poet named Mordaunt.
someone who is very ordinary and not at all famous or important: · After all her hard work, she didn't want to end up just a nobody.· A lot of the rich people who come in here treat us like nobodies.
a person or place that not many people know or know about · The picture was painted in the 15th Century by an unknown Italian artist.· Until their first single, the Beatles were virtually unknown outside Hamburg and Liverpool.unknown to · The Internet has opened up a marketplace where sellers and buyers are virtually unknown to each other.
a little known artist, film etc is one that very few people know about: · A little-known separatist group claimed responsibility for the explosion.· Bernardo Vittone is little known outside his native Italy.
not at all well-known and usually not very important: · Picasso's first exhibition received only a short mention in an obscure Parisian newspaper.· The Silver Apples are one of those obscure bands that you might hear about, but never actually hear.
written a mysterious person that people know very little about, especially someone who seems dangerous: · Vogel, a high-ranking official in East Berlin, was one of the Cold War's most shadowy figures.
someone that very little is known about, especially in relation to their abilities, so that you do not know if they will be successful: · The team's new pitcher has never played pro baseball before and is something of an unknown quantity.
difficult or impossible to understand a puzzling situation makes you feel confused, because you have tried to understand it or explain it, but you cannot: · The police are investigating the puzzling death of a man found on the freeway.· Alzheimer's disease is one of medicine's most puzzling and feared illnesses.· The fact that many people still do not understand this basic concept is both puzzling and troubling.
extremely difficult or impossible to understand, and therefore making you feel extremely confused: · To an ordinary person, the legal arguments were baffling.· New evidence has provided a clue to one of the most baffling crimes the police have had to deal with.
impossible to understand: · His English was incomprehensible.it is incomprehensible that: · It is incomprehensible that a tragedy like this could be joked about.incomprehensible to: · The leaflet was written in jargon that would have been totally incomprehensible to anyone outside the profession.
speech or writing that is unintelligible is impossible to understand because it is not clear, simple, or well planned: · Joe muttered something unintelligible, clasping his head in his hands.· Radio transmissions were often cut off or unintelligible.
incoherent speech is very difficult to understand, especially because the person who is speaking is drunk, ill, or very angry: · Harris gave rambling, incoherent answers to questions about the case.· She was clearly very ill, and at times her speech was incoherent.
a statement, joke, or idea that is obscure is very difficult to understand because the meaning is not clear unless it is carefully explained to you: · Best's art is eccentric and obscure.· Publishers would not print his earlier poetry because they felt it was too obscure.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY
The details of his life remain obscure. For some obscure reason, the group is very popular.COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
1not well known and usually not very important: The details of his life remain obscure. For some obscure reason, the group is very popular. (=covers something so that you cannot see it)· Mist obscured the ships in the harbor.
(=make it difficult to see)· A wall of mist obscured the view.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADVERB· As a system gets larger the logic becomes more obscure, modification more risky and debugging increasingly problematic.· The actor was a little more obscure about expressing his enthusiasm for Gingrich.· I don't get the impression that they tried to make a statement by getting more and more obscure.· The upward route is ten times harder and more obscure.· The effect is still good, but harmonically more obscure and dissonant.· I also tried to be a little more obscure and interesting in my song selections.· By the 1740s, Stukeley's beliefs were becoming more obscure.· War has had a searchlight effect on historians as well as contemporaries, rendering the area outside the beam yet more obscure.
· So you can find a diverse range of factoids and opinions on even the most obscure subjects.· About the most obscure thing touted is the fountain in Fountain Hills.· Then the Shorthand Subsection, which could attack the most obscure foreign shorthand systems.
· The proposed arrangements however are rather obscure.· The history of that volume in the following five or ten years, however, is rather obscure.· The reasons for Government initiative in this area, however disjointed during this period 1966-77, are rather obscure.· On the available photostat of the photostat some ranks and names are unfortunately rather obscure.· In any event, the Labour party's suggestion of a minimum wage is in itself rather obscure and bizarre.
· Until her assassination she had led a quiet and relatively obscure life.· The reasons for this have been widely discussed yet remain relatively obscure.
· Mr Serrano's motives are still obscure.· This bureaucracy, for reasons still obscure, had decided that my posture was a disgrace and had to be corrected.· The true nature of this revolt is still obscure.· On November 24, they came to Madison and chose it, for reasons still obscure, over more water-blessed locations.
NOUN· They clattered on as far as the door; under workbenches, into cracks, finding every obscure corner.· He merely watched the obscure corners of the busy planet and poked his stubby nose into dusty crannies.
· The house of Albret had emerged from obscure origins to become the most important single lineage in the duchy.· He is viewed as an outcast because of his obscure origin and mixed blood.· Despite his obscure origins Warltire established himself as a fashionable itinerant lecturer on chemistry and a supplier of laboratory chemicals.
· For some obscure reason you had to be taken over.· Archer understood that he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn, and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect.· And that faced her with a course of action which, for some obscure reason, seemed rather distasteful now.· Occasionally, for some obscure reason of her own, Elinor was pleasant.· My colleagues and I will vote against the Bill, and not for any obscure reason.
an obscure poet The details of his life remain obscure.2difficult to understand: obscure legal phrases For some obscure reason, the group is very popular.—obscurely adverbobscure1 adjectiveobscure2 verb
obscureobscure2 ●○○ verb [transitive] VERB TABLE
obscure
| Simple Form | ||
| Present | I, you, we, they | obscure |
| he, she, it | obscures | |
| Past | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | obscured |
| Present perfect | I, you, we, they | have obscured |
| he, she, it | has obscured | |
| Past perfect | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | had obscured |
| Future | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | will obscure |
| Future perfect | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | will have obscured |
| Continuous Form | ||
| Present | I | am obscuring |
| he, she, it | is obscuring | |
| you, we, they | are obscuring | |
| Past | I, he, she, it | was obscuring |
| you, we, they | were obscuring | |
| Present perfect | I, you, we, they | have been obscuring |
| he, she, it | has been obscuring | |
| Past perfect | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | had been obscuring |
| Future | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | will be obscuring |
| Future perfect | I, you, he, she, it, we, they | will have been obscuring |
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- Parts of the coast were obscured by fog.
- Despite the obscuring veil of time, many researchers can make out the traces of the Supercontinent Cycle in the Precambrian.
- Everything upon which her eyes focused was obscured by a heavy veil.
- Fitful clouds were beginning to obscure the sun.
- If the finger is used, the image is partly obscured by the hand.
- It must be redesigned so that it illuminates the choices facing the country - not, as now, obscures them.
- Soon, they would catch up with the sun and obscure it.
- That banner ad obscured an ad on the Time site for PointCast, which competes with NewsPage.
- The staining frequently obscured the nucleus making assessment of the presence of nuclear staining difficult.
THESAURUS
to make something difficult to see or find, or to not show your true feelings: · He hid the gun in his pocket.· She tried to hide her anger.· The actress put up a hand to hide her face from the cameras.
formal to hide something, especially by carefully putting it somewhere. Also used when talking about hiding your feelings, especially in negative sentences: · Several kilos of drugs were concealed in the back of the truck.· He could not conceal his feelings any longer.· The girl quickly concealed the photograph she had been gazing at.
to put something over another thing that you do not want people to see, in order to hide it completely: · People cover up cracks with wallpaper or tiles.· I used some make-up to cover up the spots.· She was wearing a thin shawl to cover up the bruises on her arm.
to make someone or something seem like a different person or thing, so that other people cannot recognize them: · She managed to get into the camp by disguising herself as a soldier.· The men had disguised the vessel as fishing boat.
to hide something by covering it with materials that make it look like the things around it: · We camouflaged the plane by covering it with leaves.· The troops used charcoal to camouflage their faces.· Soldiers had camouflaged the trucks with branches and dirt.
literary to make it difficult to see something clearly: · The view was obscured by mist.· His body was found, partially obscured by bushes, at the bottom of a shallow canyon.
to make something less noticeable, for example a taste, a smell, a sound, or a feeling: · The lemon helps to mask the taste of the fish.· Helen had turned on the radio to mask the noise of the traffic.· He did little to mask his contempt.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY Recent successes have obscured the fact that the company is still in trouble.COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
1to make something difficult to know or understand: Recent successes have obscured the fact that the company is still in trouble. (=covers something so that you cannot see it)· Mist obscured the ships in the harbor.
(=make it difficult to see)· A wall of mist obscured the view.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADVERB· When they reached the stairway the flights of stairs were almost obscured by the thick clouds of smoke.· On a sunny day, it shimmers brightly, almost obscuring the fine frescoes and reliefs that now adorn the structure.· As discussed in Chapter I government statistics obscure almost as much as they reveal the extent of poverty among women.
· It is almost completely obscured by the tree which surrounds it and hides the light under its foliage.· And the once-glorious view of the declivity was now completely obscured by trees and brush.· Eventually the hatch window was completely obscured by the smoke inside.· It was about two hours after dark, when the moon was completely obscured by the monsoon clouds.
· Some stance, some action is taken, which often obscures the underlying dilemma.· The plates of the oral frame are often obscured by thickened skin.· Borders, passports and state institutions exist, but they often obscure deeper passions and identities.· However, such simplistic answers often obscure rather more than they reveal.
NOUN· These simple comparisons obscure important differences among the presidential democracies that may have a bearing on democratic survival.· Because of its application to both speech and writing it has helped to obscure the difference between the two.· Differences at the lower end of the scale are obscured by the massive differences at the top end.· In a key area Bush tried to obscure his differences with Gore.
· Her shoulder-length hair obscured her face, though Alice moved position to try and see more than a slab of cheek.· Distance and haze obscured their messy faces.· Duck sometimes has these patches obscure, when uniform face is best distinction from other two scoters.
· But that debate should not obscure the fact that private investment was the key that unlocked the Channel Tunnel door.· But it still obscures the fact that it is women who are raped.· The authors say the argument has obscured the fact that, under either financing plan, there will be a funding gap.· This should not obscure the obvious fact that they are also profit-making concerns, too.· This striking rate of growth should not obscure the fact that the absolute level of industrial activity was still extremely low.· Many teachers try to obscure the fact that they are teaching in a multiracial school.· Second, the furore obscured the fact that Velikovsky was making an important point: catastrophes have occurred in the past.· This obscures the fact that although States act as their representatives in international arenas, individuals remain as third parties.
· The arms are long up to 10 times the disk diameter, covered with skin which obscures the underlying plates.· And remember that it is illegal to drive with an obscured license plate.· The jaws are armed with spine-like mouth papillae, otherwise covered by thick skin which obscures the associated plates.· The arms may be covered by a thin covering of skin which may obscure the plates.
· Fitful clouds were beginning to obscure the sun.· The coppery smog was so thick it obscured the setting sun.
· A white mist obscured the view, gave the high-rise buildings a ghostly look.· The trees have grown so tall, they obscure part of the view, she noted.· What was it that was happening, with this stilted mist hanging, obscuring the view of all but the immediate path ahead.· The cloud of smoke for some minutes completely enveloped the gunners and obscured them from view.· At first Ellie was not sure who it was, as her father totally obscured her view.· But smog obscures this view for all but a few days a year.· Unfortunately a fourth hangs a tea-towel over the window at this point, obscuring my view.· Merlyn was a dark column near a window, apparently looking out of it although the torrent obscured the view.
VERB· Policies emerge that are not merely compromises but also remain obscure on key points of implementation.· Both the personality and the work remain famously obscure in a way which seems almost contrived.
· The tactical model leads from a political position to pseudo-research, where facts are ignored because they might tend to obscure argument.· These movements and earlier erosion have tended to obscure Mesozoic and Paleozoic structures.· The use of quantification in studies of crime tends to obscure this diversity.· Corruption in the process of translation has tended to obscure more than names.· However, this relative prosperity tends to obscure the precarious living conditions of the 3.5m Kurds who live in the area.
Recent successes have obscured the fact that the company is still in trouble.2to prevent something from being seen or heard clearly: The view was obscured by mist.► see thesaurus at hide