All 16 Uses of
obscure
in
War and Peace
- ...would lift him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame!
Chpt 2 (definition 1) *obscure = undistinguished
- Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was still serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending comparatively little, the way of life at Otradnoe—Mitenka's management of affairs, in particular—was such that the debts inevitably increased every year.
Chpt 6 (definition 1)obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
- At first it seemed strange that the son of an obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess Rostova; but Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good natured egotism that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it would be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that it was good, indeed excellent.
Chpt 6 (definition 1)
- Though these reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.
Chpt 8 (definition 2)obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
- Everything seemed dark, obscure, and terrible.
Chpt 8 (definition 2)
- Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity of race among these people—this eighth and largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted great confusion and obscurity to the common task.
Chpt 9 (definition 3)obscurity = something that blocks a view
- Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.
Chpt 9 (definition 3) *obscured = made harder to hear and understand
- Various obscure rumors were always current among them: at one time a rumor that they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at another of a new religion to which they were all to be converted; then of some proclamation of the Tsar's and of an oath to the Tsar Paul in 1797 (in connection with which it was rumored that freedom had been granted them but the landowners had stopped it), then of Peter Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven years' time, when everything would be made free and…
Chpt 10 (definition 2)obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
- In spite of the obscurity of the soldier's words Pierre understood what he wanted to say and nodded approval.
Chpt 10 (definition 2)obscurity = the quality of being difficult to understand or see
- These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one allows oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his genius, related to Napoleon's orders to deal with four points—four different orders.
Chpt 10 (definition 2)obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
- And there was the former agitation and obscurity.
Chpt 12 (definition 2)obscurity = the quality of being difficult to understand or see
- One can imagine what confusion and obscurity would result from such an account of the duel.
Chpt 14 (definition 2)
- In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass and some unknown x. Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it—now in a geometric formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the genius of the commanders.
Chpt 14 (definition 2)obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly seen, expressed or understood
- Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of humanity's movement.
Chpt 15 (definition 2) *obscure = hard to understand
- All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the lack of a solution of that question.†
Chpt 15 (definition 2)
- Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.
Chpt 15 (definition 1)obscurity = less commonly known