Adjacent Words

obscurity definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the quality of being unclear or abstruse and hard to understand [syn: obscureness, obscurity, abstruseness, reconditeness] [ant: clarity, clearness, limpidity, lucidity, lucidness, pellucidity]
2: an obscure and unimportant standing; not well known; "he worked in obscurity for many years" [ant: prominence]
3: the state of being indistinct or indefinite for lack of adequate illumination [syn: obscurity, obscureness]

Merriam Webster's

noun (plural -ties) Date: 14th century 1. one that is obscure 2. the quality or state of being obscure

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. (pl. -ies) 1 the state of being obscure. 2 an obscure person or thing. Etymology: F obscurité f. L obscuritas (as OBSCURE)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Obscurity Ob*scu"ri*ty, n. [L. obscuritas: cf. F. obscurit['e].] The quality or state of being obscure; darkness; privacy; inconspicuousness; unintelligibleness; uncertainty. Yuo are not for obscurity designed. --Dryden. They were now brought forth from obscurity, to be contemplated by artists with admiration and despair. --Macaulay. Syn: Darkness; dimness; gloom. See Darkness.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(obscurities) 1. Obscurity is the state of being known by only a few people. For the lucky few, there's the chance of being plucked from obscurity and thrown into the glamorous world of modelling... ? fame 2. Obscurity is the quality of being difficult to understand. An obscurity is something that is difficult to understand. 'How can that be?' asked Hunt, irritated by the obscurity of Henry's reply... N-VAR

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

ob-sku'-ri-ti: In modern English generally denotes a state of very faint but still perceptible illumination, and only when preceded by some such adjective as "total" does it imply the absence of all light. In Biblical English, however, only the latter meaning is found. So in Isa 29:18 ('ophel, "darkness"); 58:10; 59:9 (choshekh, "darkness"); Additions to Esther 11:8 (gnophos, "darkness"). Compare Pr 20:20, the King James Version "in obscure darkness," the English Revised Version "in the blackest darkness," the American Standard Revised Version "in blackness of darkness."

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Darkness, dimness, gloom, gloominess, shade, obscuration, cloud, obfuscation, opacity. 2. Unintelligibleness, darkness of meaning. 3. Humbleness. 4. Seclusion, retirement, privacy.

Moby Thesaurus

Egyptian darkness, Erebus, a nobody, a nothing, abstruseness, adiaphanousness, ambiguousness, amorphia, amorphism, amorphousness, anarchy, anonymity, arcanum, blackness, bleariness, blobbiness, blur, blurriness, broadness, chaos, cipher, cloudiness, common man, complexity, confusion, dark, darkness, darkness visible, dead of night, defocus, dimness, disorder, dummy, dusk, duskiness, entropy, esoterica, faintness, feebleness, figurehead, filminess, fog, fogginess, formlessness, fuzziness, generality, gloom, half-visibility, haze, haziness, ill-definedness, imperviousness to light, imprecision, inaccuracy, inchoateness, incoherence, indecisiveness, indefinableness, indefiniteness, indeterminateness, indistinctness, indistinguishability, inexactness, ingloriousness, insignificance, insignificancy, intense darkness, intransparency, intricacy, jackstraw, laxity, lightlessness, lightweight, limbo, little fellow, little guy, looseness, low profile, man of straw, mediocrity, messiness, mist, mistiness, moonlessness, mumbo jumbo, murk, murkiness, mystery, mystification, namelessness, nebbish, nebulousness, night, nobody one knows, nonentity, obfuscation, obscurantism, obscuration, obscure, obscure darkness, opacity, opaque, opaqueness, orderlessness, paleness, perplexity, pip-squeak, pitch-darkness, pitchy darkness, punk, roil, roiledness, runt, scrub, secret, semivisibility, shade, shadow, shadowiness, shapelessness, shrimp, small fry, small potato, small potatoes, soft focus, squirt, squit, starlessness, sunlessness, swarthiness, sweepingness, tenebrosity, tenebrousness, the palpable obscure, total darkness, turbidity, turbidness, uncertainty, unclarity, unclearness, unimportance, unintelligibility, unplainness, vague appearance, vagueness, velvet darkness, weakness, whiffet, whippersnapper