Both Uses of
obscure
in
Crime and Punishment
- In one place one hears of a student's robbing the mail on the high road; in another place people of good social position forge false banknotes; in Moscow of late a whole gang has been captured who used to forge lottery tickets, and one of the ringleaders was a lecturer in universal history; then our secretary abroad was murdered from some obscure motive of gain….†
Chpt 2.5
- "There are three ways before her," he thought, "the canal, the madhouse, or…. at last to sink into depravity which obscures the mind and turns the heart to stone."†
Chpt 4.4 *
Definition:
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(obscure as in: it obscured my view) to block from view or make less visible or understandableeditor's notes: Although this meaning of obscure typically refers to seeing or understanding, it can also refer to situation where something makes something else harder to detect or as when a noise makes another noise difficult to hear. Similarly it can reference something overshadowing something else, as in "Her memory of her dog's death was obscured by her brother's death the next day."