Obscured

How to spell obscured

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce obscured

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does obscured mean?

1. verbHid, blocked, or made something difficult to see or understand.
2. adjectiveMade hidden, faint, or hard to perceive.

Obscured in a sentence

• verb

  Thick fog obscured the road ahead during the morning drive.

• adjective

  The partly obscured sign was almost impossible to read at night.

• verb

  The new tower obscured the view from her balcony.

• adjective

  Behind the overgrown hedge stood an obscured garden gate.

Where does obscured come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin obscurus, an adjective that literally meant 'dark', 'dim', or 'covered over', built from the prefix ob- ('over' or 'against') and a root linked to a word for covering. English took the adjective 'obscure' through Old French in the 1400s, where it described things hidden, faint, or hard to perceive, and the verb sense of 'to conceal or make unclear' soon followed. The form 'obscured' is the past tense and past participle, formed simply by adding -ed. A useful spelling memory is that the middle keeps the Latin -scur- intact, so it reads ob-scur-ed rather than the tempting but wrong 'obscured' with an extra vowel. The same Latin root for darkness also gives us the rarer word 'chiaroscuro', the painters' term for the play of light and shade.

How the word is built

• ob- (over, against)
• scur (from Latin obscurus: dark, covered)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)