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obscure
in a sentence
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obscure as in:  it obscured my view

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • Our view was obscured by the smoke.
    obscured = partially blocked (made less visible)
  • Something flittered there in front of his mind like a bat's wing, obscuring his idea.   (source)
    obscuring = making less visible or understandable
  • "Here," he said again, pointing the canoe at an old tree that had fallen over, obscuring an opening almost completely hidden from view.   (source)
    obscuring = making less visible
  • I retrieved my journal and wrote another entry, opposite the first, in which I revised the memory. ... The words of the second entry would not obscure the words of the first.   (source)
    obscure = hide
  • The red spot on a herring gull's bill, Kya knew, was more than decoration. Only when the chicks pecked at the spot with their bills would the parent release the captured food for them. If the red spot was obscured so that the chicks didn't tap it, the parent wouldn't feed them and they would die. Even in nature, parenthood is a thinner line than one might think.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • His face was obscured by a mop of dirty blond hair,   (source)
  • The city lights obscured the stars, but on clear nights, I could see Venus on the horizon, up over the dark water, glowing steadily.   (source)
  • In other habitats, the rim of sky above the horizontal is broken or obscured; here, together with the overhead portion, it is infinitely vaster than that of rolling countryside and forest lands…….   (source)
    obscured = blocked (so it is less visible)
  • Watanabe donned glasses to obscure his features and headed off, filled with trepidation.   (source)
    obscure = hide
  • But now the rapidly deepening snow obscured the narrow road and made the ride impossible.   (source)
    obscured = hid
▲ show less (of above)
show 89 more with this conextual meaning
  • There was a light mist blowing, partially obscuring the building that loomed directly above them.   (source)
    obscuring = making less visible
  • People were shouting at the new arrivals, dust obscured the desert sun, and the children of the oasis were bursting with excitement at the arrival of the strangers.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • ...put leaded glass in the kitchen window, obscuring the view...   (source)
    obscuring = making it harder to see
  • "The atmosphere is so thin here," Mrs Whatsit said as though in answer to her unasked question, "that it does not obscure your vision as it would at home."   (source)
    obscure = make less clear
  • Now the fog comes in thick and strong, a big fog, obscuring everything from sight.   (source)
    obscuring = hiding (making less visible)
  • all weaknesses and advantages become evident to a strong adversary and are obscured to a tiring opponent.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible or understandable
  • Brom and Eragon worried about it, but they could not convince her to allow dirt to obscure her scintillating hide.   (source)
    obscure = hide
  • "It's twilight," Edward murmured, looking at the western horizon, obscured as it was with clouds.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • The steady pulse of the Heart Crystal was behind the queen, obscured somehow.   (source)
    obscured = hidden
  • White puffs of dust were released beneath the boys' every footfall and pivot, until the field was obscured by a cloud of dry, choking dust that resembled fog.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • Where the two groups had met at the dune crest, a dust cloud partly obscured violent motion.   (source)
    obscured = hid or made less visible
  • I wanted no one to see me, and the storm swirled its eddies of snow around me and obscured me from the world.   (source)
    obscured = hid (or made less visible)
  • Cataracts were slowly obscuring Stefan's eyes; the disease had cost him half a finger and his last job.   (source)
    obscuring = blocking (so his vision grows worse)
  • Low clouds obscured the sun and a light, constant drizzle made everything look blurred.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • ...the sun entered the world in smooth, gigantic power. Nothing interrupted or obscured its coming.   (source)
  • The snow obscured the footpaths,   (source)
  • ...a plain fact is obscured: they were suited to their times then and they are, likewise, suited to their times now, as middle-aged baby boomer parents.   (source)
    obscured = hidden (or overshadowed)
  • Even Frodo felt better in the morning light, but every now and again a mist seemed to obscure his sight, and he passed his hands over his eyes.   (source)
    obscure = block (so as to make everything less visible)
  • His thinning dark hair was singed and brushed to obscure the bald spots; his eyes were encased in small rolls of flesh, attesting to long hours with good wine.   (source)
    obscure = hide
  • This has been forestalled and obscured until now, but nevertheless must be known.   (source)
    obscured = hidden; or made less visible
  • We raised our eyes and saw them there, half obscured by the smoke, half hidden by the dark:   (source)
    obscured = hidden (made less visible)
  • He'd been severely beaten, the nose crushed, the mouth all but obscured with blows and bloating.   (source)
    obscured = hidden
  • The sky had grown light enough to obscure the stars and planets.   (source)
    obscure = hide; or make less visible
  • The greater part of the smoke from it went out of the entrance; the rest did at least have the compensation that it helped to obscure the interior of the cave from any outside observation.   (source)
    obscure = hide (make less visible)
  • The mesas to the east were obscured by veils of falling snow, and the sky above them was dark blue.   (source)
    obscured = hidden or made less visible
  • They jockey for position, feinting, dueling; the two gangs shift position, now and again temporarily obscuring the fighters.   (source)
    obscuring = hiding (blocking the view of, or partially blocking the view of)
  • They were naked and filthy, with matted hair obscuring their eyes.   (source)
    obscuring = making less visible
  • And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth.   (source)
    obscures = makes it hard to see; or overshadows
  • ...as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed;   (source)
    obscured = made less visible or understandable
  • Whisky was showing in his face and the hard line of his long jaw was being obscured under an unhealthy bloat and puffs rising under his bloodshot eyes.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • ...as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first.   (source)
    obscure = make less visible or understandable
  • For a moment or two I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St. Mary's Church and all around it.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • There was no moon as yet; a haze obscured the star-light.   (source)
  • A dusk like that of the outer world obscured his mind as he heard the mare's hoofs clattering along the tramtrack on the Rock Road and the great can swaying and rattling behind him.   (source)
    obscured = clouded (made less clear)
  • Sometimes their way led them under the shade of an overhanging bank or through the thin obscurity of a clump of leafless trees.   (source)
    obscurity = something that blocks a view
  • Dense clouds of smoke or dust ... spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished too.   (source)
    obscured = blocked the view of
  • By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest devotion to study ... and more than all, to the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp.   (source)
    obscuring = making less visible
  • He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was sure of it.   (source)
    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.   (source)
    obscured = made harder to hear and understand
  • I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and, whenever circumstances were favorable to his dancing at Biddy, got before him to obscure that demonstration.   (source)
    obscure = to block from view or make less visible
  • ...he saw only a gray mass, which was veiled also by a cloud, which at that moment obscured the moon's feeble light.   (source)
    obscured = hid
  • I had been calm during the day, but so soon as night obscured the shapes of objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind.   (source)
    obscured = made less visible
  • But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets.†   (source)
  • Luckily it wasn't a very clear picture: Alex had his hand in front of him, which partly obscured his face.†   (source)
  • Left and right, thick underbrush obscured everything farther than twenty yards into the woods.†   (source)
  • The sky was obscured by a strangely mottled layer of clouds.†   (source)
  • The building across from us obscured Ninth, so the dots were superimposed where Paul and his gang were, as if I could see through the building.†   (source)
  • It is unquestionably beautiful, but its beauty is obscured by the environmental waste and loose trash that scatters the countryside.†   (source)
  • I can see my reflection from all angles: the gray fabric obscuring the shape of my back, my long neck, my knobby-knuckled hands, red with a blood blush.†   (source)
  • His face was partially obscured by an oxygen mask and his eyes were closed.†   (source)
  • The driver drove at reckless speeds, through towns and cities, the heavy rain obscuring most of the view Lights and buildings were warped and watery, like something out of a drug-induced hallucination.†   (source)
  • The sarcophagus was recessed in a niche, obscured from this oblique angle.†   (source)
  • They are partly obscured by falling ringlets.†   (source)
  • But when Mae looked to her wrist, she saw only the darkest form, his face obscured.†   (source)
  • He was there and he was gone again, his silvery armor obscured by the trees once more.†   (source)
  • The low-lying clouds aren't clouds at all but smoke pouring from a thousand chimneys, obscuring the sky.†   (source)
  • But now my face is almost obscured by the dramatic highlights and dark shadows.†   (source)
  • The quantity of blood obscured the textbook details he remembered.†   (source)
  • Beyond the glass, the peaks of his father's body were obscured beneath the white sheet, not unlike the queen and her veil.†   (source)
  • The Vogon raised a surprised eyebrow that effectively obscured his nose and was therefore no bad thing.†   (source)
  • A lorry went past, making our car wobble and, for a few seconds, obscuring our view of the hoarding.†   (source)
  • When—with difficulty —I made my way into the center of the space, or what seemed like the center of the space, I saw that one door was obscured by rags of hanging debris, and I turned and began to work in the other direction.†   (source)
  • Things that had been out of bounds so far, obscured by history's blinkers.†   (source)
  • The gas puffed up in a thin cloud that partly obscured Bunker Six.†   (source)
  • Sidewinder's main street was already heavily powdered, the center line obscured.†   (source)
  • She turns to him, still laughing, her eyes still obscured.†   (source)
  • In daylight, it was simple to find the place, but nightfall had obscured the hills.†   (source)
  • The smoke from my body began obscuring the letters.†   (source)
  • He has a handheld telescope and is scanning the sky, which is mostly obscured by clouds.†   (source)
  • I pointed to a tall hill obscuring my view of the northern bluffs.†   (source)
  • Wind-driven torrents of rain obscured the Sea and rattled the leaded panes.†   (source)
  • It's a process, honey, and life is real enough without having to be obscured by lies.†   (source)
  • He thought that both the idealism of the Romantics and Hegel's 'historicism' had obscured the individual's responsibility for his own life.†   (source)
  • Then his view is obscured by something close up; the recoil has pushed him back behind a decrepit yacht tied up along the side of the channel.†   (source)
  • They stood tall, as if unready for the snap but in fact obscuring the defense's view of their backfield.†   (source)
  • Even with my memory obscured and incomplete, I knew.†   (source)
  • And spoke, the lower half of her face obscured by her cup.†   (source)
  • A perfect circle—its walls obscured by years of wild vines.†   (source)
  • I swung around and tried to locate the others, but the blood from my forehead was still trickling down my face, obscuring my vision.†   (source)
  • Class obscured their vision.†   (source)
  • Trillions of bubbles had formed, creating an "ensonified zone" around the target that rapidly obscured it.†   (source)
  • And now I saw him at a distance, eyes intent, the palette in his hand, the huge canvas obscuring the arm that moved.†   (source)
  • I had no idea where he managed to find them, but a pair of aviator sunglasses obscured a good portion of his face from view.†   (source)
  • I too am blanketed, my harsh edges obscured and transformed.†   (source)
  • Dan leaned over the little visitor's chair to get a better look, but whatever had been written on the paper was now obscured by spilled ink.†   (source)
  • I open them, feeling silly, and at the same time a hundred thousand butterflies take off around me, so many of them in so many brilliant colors they are like a solid rainbow, temporarily obscuring the sun.†   (source)
  • A bus comes lurching around the curve, obscuring her view.†   (source)
  • The walls and windows were obscured by accumulated objects, which seemed now to be edging toward the middle of the room.†   (source)
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obscure as in:  the view or directions are obscure

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • She left instructions for us, but they are so obscure we can't agree on what they are.
    obscure = not clearly expressed or understood
  • She sat obscurely in the far corner of the room.
    obscurely = inconspicuously (not drawing attention to herself)
  • While the stories were vivid, the lectures were abstract, treatises on obscure philosophical subjects, and it was to these abstractions that I devoted most of my study.   (source)
    obscure = difficult to understand
  • When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic.   (source)
    obscure = little understood
  • There were just drawings, coded instructions, and obscure texts. "Why do they make things so complicated?" he asked the Englishman one night.   (source)
    obscure = difficult to understand
  • Could your note have been any more obscure?   (source)
    obscure = not clearly expressed
  • He stood and he had only one leg. The other was like a chunk of burnt pine-log he was carrying along as a penance for some obscure sin. When he put his weight on it, a shower of silver needles gushed up the length of the calf and went off in the knee.   (source)
    obscure = little understood
  • Some obscure sense told her that a few were getting out the fire doors, but let them.   (source)
    obscure = mysterious (not clearly understood)
  • The Bene Gesserit role is more obscure.   (source)
    obscure = not well known to many people
  • I still had a hard time finding the obscure turnoff to his house in the dark.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen
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show 89 more with this conextual meaning
  • After Uncle Julian left, my mother became more withdrawn, or maybe a better word would be obscure, as in faint, unclear, distant.   (source)
    obscure = not easily detected (not easily seen, heard, understood...)
  • Instead of clarifying matters, that only made them more obscure, at least to Newt.   (source)
    obscure = difficult to understand
  • They both slip into the car, ignoring the driver, as their discussion of this obscure point drifts into discord.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly understood
  • I was filled with a wordless, obscurely murderous unrest.   (source)
  • The magazine was folded open to a page on which there was a sketch of a bearded man, the lines rough, inconclusive, as if drawn from an obscure description.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen or expressed
  • His photographs were available for study and dissection, but his personal life remained obscure.   (source)
    obscure = mysterious (not known)
  • ...wooden panels with sayings... Many of them were still obscure to me; others I had learnt something about.   (source)
    obscure = hard to understand
  • ...we are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being difficult to understand
  • Dust lay thick on the floor, there were neat hillocks of chipped cement and the earth where bandicoots, for some obscure reason of their own, had dug.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly understood
  • But Bernard would not be cheered; without answering, without even looking at Helmholtz, he went and sat down on the most uncomfortable chair in the room, carefully chosen in the obscure hope of somehow deprecating the wrath of the higher powers.   (source)
    obscure = vague (little understood)
  • There is some obscure meaning in this but I fail to catch it.   (source)
    obscure = difficult to understand
  • Blinking away the brightness of the street outside, my eyes picked him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to another man.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that was not clear
  • Their life is obscure and guiltless;—if I could know more of them, what their names are, how they live, what they are waiting for, what are their burdens, then my emotion would have an object and might become sympathy.   (source)
    obscure = little understood
  • Unashamed of how he came by his fortune, he pretended that they, too, were unashamed of their beginnings and he seldom missed an opportunity to remark upon matters which, by common consent, everyone felt were better left in polite obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = hiding (the state of being hidden--not seen or discussed)
  • I learned that Anne Stanton had become the mistress of Willie Stark, that somehow by an obscure and necessary logic I had handed her over to him.   (source)
    obscure = difficult to understand
  • It was as though he had an obscure but deep debt to fulfill to himself.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly understood
  • For here again we come within range of that very interesting and obscure masculine complex which has had so much influence upon the woman's movement; that deep-seated desire, not so much that SHE shall be inferior as that HE shall be superior, which plants him wherever one looks, not only in front of the arts, but barring the way to politics too, even when the risk to himself seems infinitesimal and the suppliant humble and devoted.   (source)
    obscure = little understood
  • "A pleasing little problem, obscure and charming," murmured Poirot. "I will investigate it for you with pleasure."   (source)
    obscure = mysterious (difficult to understand/solve)
  • For a couple of hours Archer had examined the terms of the deed with his senior, all the while obscurely feeling that if he had been consulted it was for some reason other than the obvious one of his cousinship; and that the close of the conference would reveal it.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner not clearly understood
  • Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light into obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets.   (source)
    obscure = difficult to understand
  • The style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterises the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes.   (source)
  • Obscurely wounded in his pride, he tried to wound them in return.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly understood
  • Didn't I understand those senseless words of Fyodor's?  And understanding them, did I doubt of their truth?  Did I think them stupid, obscure, inexact?  No, I understood him, and exactly as he understands the words.   (source)
    obscure = difficult to understand
  • With his own ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but majestic, figure had imparted to me the scarlet symbol and the little roll of explanatory manuscript.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly seen (like a ghost)
  • He appeared to me to have obscurely hinted in his letter at some distant idea he had of seeing you in England here.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly expressed
  • It was on the obscure side of the tower, screened to a great extent from the view of passers along the road—a spot which until lately had been abandoned to heaps of stones and bushes of alder, but now it was cleared and made orderly for interments, by reason of the rapid filling of the ground elsewhere.   (source)
    obscure = not typically seen
  • As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly seen
  • At this instant a bright light shot through the mind of Dantes, and cleared up all that had been dark and obscure before.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen or understood
  • The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly seen
  • Oh! but dear Miss Woodhouse, she is now in such retirement, such obscurity, so thrown away.   (source)
    obscurity = difficulty in understanding
  • The first part was obvious, the second obscure but hardly concealed.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • Obscure promises balanced by vague threats.   (source)
  • And he drove away, leaving Vic to wonder if the mailman had been serious or if he (Vic) had just been on the receiving end of some obscure Yankee joke.   (source)
    obscure = mysterious (not understood)
  • "They c'n go loose and rape up the countryside for all of 'em who run this county care," was one obscure observation we met head on from a skinny gentleman when he passed us.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly expressed
  • Clearly they were of the opinion that Jack had done the decent thing, had put himself in the right by his generous apology and Ralph, obscurely, in the wrong.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly seen, expressed or understood
  • First, naturally, there'll be the trip to the Caymans, where, I'm told, there are excellent tailors; then perhaps a clever little yacht and a small charter business that can be substantiated as having been moved from Tierra del Fuego or the Malvinas, some godforsaken place where a little money can produce an identity and a highly credible if obscure past.   (source)
    obscure = mysterious (not clearly seen or understood)
  • The Bourne had meant nothing, the J. Bourne still meaningless, but in the combination Jason and Bourne, obscure tumblers locked into place.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • "I've seen better art scrawled in alleys."
      Though she privately agreed, Lee only shrugged. "Some people like the clunky and obscure."   (source)
  • It was years since I had dreamed about that, but it still looked just the same, and in some quite obscure way it soothed me.   (source)
  • It slowed down, awkwardly yet instinctively, as if programmed to halt at a specific area; it stopped, an obscure moving silhouette up the road.   (source)
  • A dark outline darker than the wall, an intrusion of black on lesser black-obscure, faint, barely discernible, but there.   (source)
  • Vague, obscure outlines-images.   (source)
  • Not bad for a career soldier from a lower-middle-class family in Nebraska who married a hairdresser in Hawaii thirty years ago, and supposedly bought his manse ten years ago on the strength of a very sizable inheritance from an untraceable benefactor, an obscure wealthy uncle I couldn't find.   (source)
  • Ship timbers, wind in the rigging, and then shouts of sailors calling obscure but inescapably nautical instructions from all directions, far and near:   (source)
  • As soon as we make a move they'll come pouring in from every side, shouting obscure instructions, confusing us with ridiculous remarks, messing us about from here to breakfast and getting our names wrong.   (source)
  • 'The motive is obscure,' I said thoughtfully, 'but I'm certain that Parker's a bad lot.'   (source)
  • He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.   (source)
    obscurely = vague (little understood)
  • And partly for some more obscure reason. There seemed to be some obstacle, some impediment in Mr A's mind which blocked the fountain of creative energy and shored it within narrow limits.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • And with but a few minutes between him and the beginning of judgment, the obscure longing to possess the thing which Max had dimly evoked in him was still a motive.   (source)
  • Having been thrown by an accidental murder into a position where he had sensed a possible order and meaning in his relations with the people about him; having accepted the moral guilt and responsibility for that murder because it had made him feel free for the first time in his life; having felt in his heart some obscure need to be at home with people and having demanded ransom money to enable him to do it--having done all this and failed, he chose not to struggle any more.   (source)
  • With a supreme act of will springing from the essence of his being, he turned away from his life and the long train of disastrous consequences that had flowed from it and looked wistfully upon the dark face of ancient waters upon which some spirit had breathed and created him, the dark face of the waters from which he had been first made in the image of a man with a man's obscure need and urge; feeling that he wanted to sink back into those waters and rest eternally.   (source)
  • With this new sense of the value of himself gained from Max's talk, a sense fleeting and obscure, he tried to feel that if Max had been able to see the man in him beneath those wild and cruel acts of his, acts of fear and hate and murder and flight and despair, then he too would hate, if he were they, just as now he was hating them and they were hating him.   (source)
  • He would know obscure things, hidden from others,   (source)
    obscure = mysterious (hard for others to understand)
  • and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • She felt that Henry had been obscurely censured.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly seen, expressed or understood
  • "There are plenty of people to tell you what to do," Archer rejoined, obscurely envious of them.   (source)
  • Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope.   (source)
    obscurity = the condition of being unseen or unknown
  • Though these reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • There is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus multitudinously baptised.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being difficult to understand or see
  • I continued, turning to an obscure cushion full of something like cats.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful?   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly seen, expressed or understood
  • ...was eager to talk to anyone of any subject that interested him, even if still obscure to himself.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • But general propositions as to feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful and obscure.   (source)
  • Everything seemed dark, obscure, and terrible.   (source)
  • And there was the former agitation and obscurity.   (source)
    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.   (source)
  • Still she did not speak and, prompted by an obscure desire to help himself and her through their miserable last hour, he went on discursively: "Ain't it funny we haven't been down together but just that once last winter?"   (source)
    obscure = little understood
  • Shrewd ones may also think it but natural in Billy to set about sounding some of the other impressed men of the ship in order to discover what basis, if any, there was for the emissary's obscure suggestions as to plotting disaffection aboard.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • It was strange too that he found an arid pleasure in following up to the end the rigid lines of the doctrines of the church and penetrating into obscure silences only to hear and feel the more deeply his own condemnation.   (source)
  • At that question unintentionally touching on a spiritual sphere wholly obscure to Billy's thoughts, he was nonplussed, evincing a confusion indeed that some observers, such as can readily be imagined, would have construed into involuntary evidence of hidden guilt.   (source)
  • But these thoughts and kindred dubious ones flitting across his mind were suddenly replaced by an intuitional surmise which, though as yet obscure in form, served practically to affect his reception of the ill tidings.   (source)
  • May herself could not understand his obscure reluctance to fall in with so reasonable and pleasant a way of spending the summer.   (source)
  • In contrast with the funereal hue of these surroundings the prone sailor's exterior apparel, white jumper and white duck trousers, each more or less soiled, dimly glimmered in the obscure light of the bay like a patch of discolored snow in early April lingering at some upland cave's black mouth.   (source)
  • He became aware of the same obscure effort in her, the same reaching out toward something beyond the usual range of her vision.   (source)
  • He felt himself drawn to her by obscure feelings of jealousy and pity, as if her dumbly-confessed error had put her at his mercy, humbling yet endearing her.   (source)
  • Other lanterns at intervals serve but to bring out somewhat the obscurer bays which, like small confessionals or side-chapels in a cathedral, branch from the long dim-vistaed broad aisle between the two batteries of that covered tier.   (source)
    obscurer = less visible or less understandable
  • …the old Merlin gave a twisting wrench with his black teeth at his plug of tobacco, vouchsafing no reply to Billy's impetuous question, tho' now repeated, for it was his wont to relapse into grim silence when interrogated in skeptical sort as to any of his sententious oracles, not always very clear ones, rather partaking of that obscurity which invests most Delphic deliverances from any quarter.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being difficult to understand or see
  • 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.   (source)
    obscure = hard to understand
  • …that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby Dick.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen
  • This was what gave plausibility to the whispers, that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed, or otherwise than so obscurely intimated.   (source)
    obscurely = in a manner that is not clearly expressed
  • Some future traveller, visiting, from motives of curiosity, not unmingled, let us hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to debtors in this city, may, and I trust will, Ponder, as he traces on its wall, inscribed with a rusty nail, "The obscure initials, 'W. M.'"   (source)
    obscure = mysterious (not understanding what the initials stand for)
  • "I am quite sure," he replied, speaking very distinctly, "that he told me she had accepted him; and that there was no obscurity, nothing doubtful, in the words he used;"   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being difficult to understand or see
  • I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly understood
  • Sometimes this obscure corner received no inhabitant for the space of two or three years, and then it was usually but a pauper, a poacher, or other sinner of undignified sins.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly seen, understood, or expressed
  • The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that different order of creature dying there, and that it would have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his vermin kind.   (source)
  • Afterwards, when we were fairly at our work, I found Mr. Jack Maldon's efforts more troublesome to me than I had expected, as he had not confined himself to making numerous mistakes, but had sketched so many soldiers, and ladies' heads, over the Doctor's manuscript, that I often became involved in labyrinths of obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being difficult to understand or see
  • "Sire," said Villefort, "I will render a faithful report to your majesty, but I must entreat your forgiveness if my anxiety leads to some obscurity in my language."   (source)
  • I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to question but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom.   (source)
    obscure = not clearly understood
  • Men of family would not be very fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity—and most prudent men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being difficult to understand or see
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obscure as in:  the famous and the obscure

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  • An Internet search proved she had plagiarized from an obscure poem written in 1920.
  • She was just another obscure student until she created the YouTube video that went viral.
    obscure = not important or not noticeably different than others
  • He had always paid attention to details, especially when he'd begun his practice. Little things, obscure things, and it had become a habit now.   (source)
    obscure = seemingly unimportant
  • Anorak's Invitation was crammed with obscure '80s pop culture references, nearly all of which were lost on me the first time I viewed it.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • I devoted most of my waking hours to fantasizing about, and then undertaking, ascents of remote mountains in Alaska and Canada, obscure spires, steep and frightening, that nobody in the world beyond a handful of climbing geeks had ever heard of.   (source)
  • If the Americans were turning their efforts toward a lone steel mill in a place as obscure as Naoetsu, had the B-29s already destroyed the big strategic cities?   (source)
    obscure = seemingly unimportant
  • Then, in 1987, InGen bought an obscure company called Millipore Plastic Products in Nashville, Tennessee.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • Mr. Ewell was a veteran of an obscure war;   (source)
  • We're in an obscure little corner of the Pacificus here.   (source)
  • She lives on some obscure street in West Amsterdam, and none of us know where it is.   (source)
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show 89 more with this conextual meaning
  • Your expeditions often take you into obscure regions.   (source)
  • His voice quivering, he would read her a poem he had written, pretending it was the work of an obscure poet:   (source)
    obscure = little known (not known to many people)
  • He also sold beer, cheap wine, dirty books, and a wide selection of obscure cigarettes such as Murads, King Sano, and Marvel Straights.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • Despite the fact that she only skimmed the documents in the report, she always seemed to settle on the most obscure and contradictory details.   (source)
    obscure = seemingly unimportant
  • He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future.   (source)
  • I scribbled down the Dewey Decimal Number for the book and found it up on an obscure shelf, dusty and lonely.   (source)
    obscure = not used by many people
  • But, with a dreadful feeling, she remembered how it had been her who'd insisted that he publish the book. He'd argued with her, saying it was too personal, a private matter, but she'd pushed and pushed, softening his resistance until he finally broke down and agreed. Because wasn't that what wives of artists were meant to do? Husband their husbands' work into the world, which, without them, would be lost to obscurity?   (source)
    obscurity = a condition of not being known by many people
  • Cedric just smiles, and around the room they go, pulling up obscure CDs and humming songs and reminiscing.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • ...as far as I know there is no Power in the world that knows all about hobbits. Among the Wise I am the only one that goes in for hobbit-lore: an obscure branch of knowledge, but full of surprises.   (source)
  • She has a talent for digging up obscure facts, some of them impossibly dry, and turning them into intriguing stories.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people (or seemingly unimportant and uninteresting)
  • ...some of whom, like Socrates and Aristotle and Newton and Einstein, were known to almost everyone, but most of whom were far more obscure.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • He was older than most of us and had been ordained in some obscure little sect I had never heard of.   (source)
  • He'd been lucky, she decided, very lucky that the incident had occurred on such an obscure sector, in a hellhole that didn't garner much attention.   (source)
  • His eyes sought its infinitely high ceiling, and although they found nothing he felt as if he were going forward not to some obscure death but to the resurrection of beauty and a meeting with those who had gone before.   (source)
    obscure = unimportant or undistinguished
  • odd little bits of trivia about obscure inventors and scientists, people he said society had not properly received.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • This is not so much a literal view of Hillsboro as it is an impression of a sleepy, obscure country town about to be vigorously awakened.   (source)
  • ...scientists anxious to carry out obscure tests with complicated instruments.   (source)
    obscure = not understood by many people
  • He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.   (source)
    obscure = undistinguished
  • He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.   (source)
    obscurity = less commonly known
  • The war had definitely established the importance of Atlanta in the affairs of the South and the hitherto obscure town was now known far and wide.   (source)
    obscure = not known by many people; or undistinguished
  • ...thanks to the toils of those obscure women in the past, of whom I wish we knew more,   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • Although perhaps it is not so fully demonstrative of Poirot's peculiar methods as some of the more obscure cases, its sensational features, the well-known people involved, and the tremendous publicity given it by the Press, make it stand out...   (source)
    obscure = inconspicuously (in a manner where they are not noticed)
  • As it was, he impressed himself professionally on Europe to an extent that made his comparative personal obscurity, and the failure of Oxford to do justice to his eminence, a puzzle to foreign specialists in his subject.   (source)
    obscurity = the condition of not standing out or being well known by many people
  • I have written to my old friend and master, Professor Van Helsing, of Amsterdam, who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world.   (source)
    obscure = unusual (not known to many people)
  • Only the older people remembered so obscure an incident in the business life of New York as Beaufort's failure, or the fact that after his wife's death he had been quietly married to the notorious Fanny Ring, and had left the country with his new wife, and a little girl who inherited her beauty.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • He spent the time still remaining to him with a dictionary, copying out obscure words he would need to guide the Italian round the cathedral.   (source)
  • your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business.   (source)
    obscure = undistinguished
  • he might be a man heretofore doomed to peace and obscurity, but, in reality, made to shine in war.   (source)
    obscurity = lack of distinction (unremarkable )
  • They were building up a new life, obscure, yet gilded with tranquillity.   (source)
    obscure = undistinguished
  • It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her—kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure—free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being...   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?   (source)
    obscure = undistinguished or unimportant
  • ...would lift him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame!   (source)
    obscure = undistinguished
  • As I passed the church, I felt (as I had felt during service in the morning) a sublime compassion for the poor creatures who were destined to go there, Sunday after Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie obscurely at last among the low green mounds.  I promised myself that I would do something for them one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, upon everybody in the village.   (source)
    obscurely = in an unknown or undistinguished manner
  • Turning down an obscure street and entering an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • The family began to get accustomed to their obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = the condition of being undistinguished
  • I packed up my chemical instruments and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my labours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland.   (source)
    obscure = inconspicuous or undistinguished
  • I must look down upon anything contented with obscurity when it might rise to distinction.   (source)
    obscurity = lack of distinction
  • Some obscure California magazine publishes a report that...   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • What is it Thomas Hardy says in Jude the Obscure?   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • They won't be if you want to explore every obscure piece of knowledge.   (source)
  • And Procompsognathus is an obscure animal.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • We were constantly trying to out-geek each other with our knowledge of obscure gunter trivia.   (source)
  • Among these was my own channel: Parzival-TV—Broadcasting obscure eclectic crap, 24-7-365.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • She'd caught my obscure Highlander quote and thrown another right back at me.   (source)
  • the forty volunteers each had died of obscure and horrible diseases no one had ever seen before.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • If you'd named some obscure French film, I'd have had to find something else.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • He had not read every word of the report, but the further into the investigation he got, the more obscure the subsequent leads and tips became.   (source)
  • I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • Suspecting that Louie's friends would pull wedding night pranks, the newlyweds stole off to an obscure hotel, and Cynthia called home.   (source)
  • He hoped it would take him to someplace distant and obscure, but the train reached its terminus only two towns down the line, at the metropolis of Kofu.   (source)
  • Wennerström's apparently inexhaustible supply of obscure post-office-box companies seemed to be cropping up everywhere, linked to all manner of shady enterprises.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • But InGen was obviously setting up one of the most powerful genetic engineering facilities in the world in an obscure Central American country.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • During the following weeks, as Millennium's documentation was scrutinised, pulled apart, and pieced together again, the Wennerström empire of obscure companies was linked to the heart of the international Mafia, including everything from illegal arms dealing and money laundering for South American drug cartels to prostitution in New York, and even indirectly to the child sex trade in Mexico.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • Then I realized it was the female version of Tranzor Z, an obscure character from the original Mazinger Z anime series known as Minerva X.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • Gunters loved to play the game of one-upmanship and were constantly trying to prove they had acquired more obscure knowledge than everyone else.   (source)
  • "Daggorath" (with two "g"s) could refer only to one thing: an incredibly obscure computer game called Dungeons of Daggorath released in 1982.   (source)
  • He was known to fire longtime employees for not recognizing an obscure line of movie dialogue he quoted, or if he discovered they weren't familiar with one of his favorite cartoons, comic books, or videogames.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • (Several exhaustive psychological studies were done on Halliday following his death, and his obsessive adherence to routine and preoccupation with a few obscure areas of interest led many psychologists to conclude that Halliday had suffered from Asperger's syndrome, or from some other form of high-functioning autism.)   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • Atticus killed several birds with one stone when he read to his children, and would probably have caused a child psychologist considerable dismay: he read to Jem and Jean Louise whatever he happened to be reading, and the children grew up possessed of an obscure erudition.   (source)
    obscure = unusual (not known to many people)
  • Then there's a matter of a little scandal some years back involving roulette, a redhead, and a fatality on an obscure gaming satellite in Sector 38.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • "How many dozens of obscure Latin and Greek tomes did you read as the marsh ebbed to and fro, the insects buzzed around the marble mausoleums, and the moths ate your father's tweed hunting jackets?" he asked, after failing to salute.   (source)
  • In the dusk coming down the trail he saw a movement and then what seemed to be a dog approaching on the trail, a very large sheep dog, or an animal more like a husky, and he wondered what would bring a dog to this obscure place at this time of evening.   (source)
  • He went via narrow and obscure channels, through which he spent much of the time backing out to let oncoming boats pass under bridges so low that he and Alessandro had to run from end to end of the gondola to tilt the bow and stern to allow it to slide underneath.   (source)
  • To them, fresh from obscure beginnings, she WAS society.   (source)
  • She must have followed him here, because it was not credible that by pure chance she should have happened to be walking on the same evening up the same obscure backstreet, kilometres distant from any quarter where Party members lived.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people (or seemingly unimportant and uninteresting)
  • All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said, addressing Mary Carmichael as if she were present; and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo, and the rings embedded in their fat swollen fingers, talking with a gesticulation like the swing of Shakespeare's words; or from the violet-sellers and match-sellers…   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • There was Hardman suspecting Lady Runcorn; there was I, suspecting the Countess and Johnston; and all the time, the obscure Mr Parker was our man.   (source)
  • At the onset of the war, he had emerged from obscurity with enough money to buy a small swift boat and now, when blockaded goods realized two thousand per cent on each cargo, he owned four boats.   (source)
    obscurity = less commonly known
  • But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.   (source)
  • Her thought drew being from the obscure borderland.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • ...what is very peculiar to this flat—its obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = less commonly known
  • You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.   (source)
    obscure = undistinguished
  • Turning down an obscure street and entering an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop.   (source)
    obscurer = less known, visible, or understandable
  • Even in that obscure position, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object of constant notice:   (source)
    obscure = undistinguished or unimportant
  • And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of poverty and obscurity.   (source)
  • And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of poverty and obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = lack of distinction or importance
  • Ethan, consumed with the longing for a last moment alone with Mattie, hung about impatiently while Denis made an ineffectual search in the obscurer corners of the store.   (source)
    obscurer = less familiar (less used and less known)
  • He had begun life as an obscure financier by lending small sums of money to workmen at usurious interest.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • the death of that obscure Italian...   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people
  • Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • She met the words with a long silence, during which the carriage rolled down an obscure side-street and then turned into the searching illumination of Fifth Avenue.   (source)
  • It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night — and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over.   (source)
    obscurely = in an unknown or undistinguished manner
  • If society chose to open its doors to vulgar women the harm was not great, though the gain was doubtful; but once it got in the way of tolerating men of obscure origin and tainted wealth the end was total disintegration—and at no distant date.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
  • They clattered down flagged passages, looking into room after room, and scaring unknown maids from the performance of obscure duties.   (source)
  • At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Archer called "plain people"; an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families who (as in the case of the Spicers or the Leffertses or the Jacksons) had been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans.   (source)
  • …as he looked back, was not sure that men like himself WERE what his country needed, at least in the active service to which Theodore Roosevelt had pointed; in fact, there was reason to think it did not, for after a year in the State Assembly he had not been re-elected, and had dropped back thankfully into obscure if useful municipal work, and from that again to the writing of occasional articles in one of the reforming weeklies that were trying to shake the country out of its apathy.   (source)
  • This wife died a year and a half ago ... in some obscure place, where she was housekeeper in a family.   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people and undistinguished
  • 'Hide yourself,' she pursued, 'if not at home, somewhere.  Let it be somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life...'   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people and not attracting notice
  • They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before,   (source)
    obscure = not known to many people and undistinguished
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obscure as in:  was obscure, but now bright

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • The jungle became obscure as the sun set.
  • The savage peered into the obscurity beneath the thicket.   (source)
    obscurity = something dark and very difficult to identify or comprehend
  • With a grateful smile, Eragon dashed to Tronjheim, ate in an obscure corner of a kitchen, then followed Nasuada's instructions until he reached a small gray door guarded by a man and a dwarf.   (source)
    obscure = inconspicuous
  • As I have said, we stood there for a long time in a strong embrace, but with her face lowered against my chest, and my own eyes staring across the room and out a window into the deepening obscurity of the evening.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • The Daily Blare was a paper that made the most of any opportunity for sensationalism. Robberies and murders did not lurk obscurely in its back pages. Instead they hit you in the eye in large type on the front page.   (source)
    obscurely = not known to many people
  • As it drove off she leaned forward, and he thought she waved her hand in the obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • In the obscurity I could see he made a gesture of despair.   (source)
  • In the midst of all this the lamp still cast a smoky glow, obscure and brown as umber.   (source)
    obscure = dark
  • but the guiding light shone nowhere. All was obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness (making it hard to see)
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show 43 more with this conextual meaning
  • There was a great fire, and that was all the light in the huge apartment, whose floor had grown a uniform grey; and the once brilliant pewter-dishes, which used to attract my gaze when I was a girl, partook of a similar obscurity, created by tarnish and dust.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • Immediately afterwards the light expired, and the room was plunged in frightful obscurity,   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • I suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald" of August 13, 1863, observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the announcement...   (source)
    obscure = not very noticeable
  • It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy.   (source)
    obscure = dark
  • He even smiled again--that same sad smile, which always appeared like a faint glimmering of light, proceeding from the obscurity beneath the veil.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • Everything was scrupulously clean, as if the owner spent his leisure time digging in obscure crannies for minuscule pieces of filth.   (source)
    obscure = dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • He did not speak, or make any sign as she approached, "gliding like a shadow among shadows," but remained standing where he had been, in the deepest obscurity of the summerhouse.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • The room was almost dark, but in the obscurity he saw her sitting by the window,   (source)
  • In another moment she would step forth into the night, and his eyes, accustomed to the obscurity, would discern her as clearly as though she stood in daylight.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.   (source)
  • On the fourteenth day I went into the kitchen, and I was surprised to find that the fronds of the red weed had grown right across the hole in the wall, turning the half-light of the place into a crimson-coloured obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • Archer knew that Madame Olenska lived in a square near one of the avenues radiating from the Invalides; and he had pictured the quarter as quiet and almost obscure, forgetting the central splendour that lit it up.   (source)
    obscure = dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • I could not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I came upon one of those round well-like openings of which I have told you, half closed by a fallen pillar.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they reflected the light in the same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light.   (source)
  • He bent down, feeling in the obscurity for the glassy slide worn by preceding coasters, and placed the runners carefully between its edges.   (source)
  • He opened the barn-door and craned his head into the obscurity, half-fearing to discover Denis Eady's roan colt in the stall beside the sorrel.   (source)
  • Through the obscurity which hid their faces their thoughts seemed to dart at each other like serpents shooting venom.   (source)
  • I went after him into a low unlit passage, at the back of which a ladder-like staircase rose into obscurity.   (source)
  • He was a sober, steady-looking young man of retiring manners, with a comic head of hair, and eyes that were rather wide open; and he got into an obscure corner so soon, that I had some difficulty in making him out.   (source)
    obscure = dark
  • Newman followed—he would have followed head first, but for the timely assistance of Nicholas—and, taking his hand, led him through a stone passage, profoundly dark, into a back-kitchen or cellar, of the blackest and most pitchy obscurity, where they stopped.   (source)
    obscurity = dark or dingy
  • Either the sudden gleams of light flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized...   (source)
    obscure = dark (or perhaps: not clearly seen)
  • The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep—whom many fell away from in dread—pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd.   (source)
    obscure = dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace!   (source)
    obscure = dark
  • Clouds hid the moon, everything was obscure, and I heard only the sound of the boat as its keel cut through the waves; the murmur lulled me, and in a short time I slept soundly.   (source)
    obscure = dark or not seen clearly
  • And yet the faint, sad smile, so often there, now seemed to glimmer from its obscurity, and linger on Father Hooper's lips.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • At the sight of these men the Englishman started and advanced a step; then restrained himself, and retired into the farthest and most obscure corner of the apartment.   (source)
    obscure = dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which he had never moved, Sydney Carton came and took her up.   (source)
  • Having completed her task, she rose to draw down the blind, which she had hitherto kept up, by way, I suppose, of making the most of daylight, though dusk was now fast deepening into total obscurity.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • The floor of the abbe's cell was paved, and it had been by raising one of the stones in the most obscure corner that Faria had to been able to commence the laborious task of which Dantes had witnessed the completion.   (source)
    obscure = dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • "Have patience with me, Elizabeth!" cried he, passionately. "Do not desert me, though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine, and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between our souls! It is but a mortal veil--it is not for eternity!  O! you know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!"   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • He had previously communicated his plan to the former, who aided the deceit by quitting his house, under the pretence of a journey and concealed himself, with his daughter, in an obscure part of Paris.   (source)
    obscure = inconspicuous (not attracting attention)
  • During all my first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • Edmond inserted his lever in the ring and exerted all his strength; the flag-stone yielded, and disclosed steps that descended until they were lost in the obscurity of a subterraneous grotto.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity.   (source)
  • Dantes, cast from solitude into the world, frequently experienced an imperious desire for solitude; and what solitude is more complete, or more poetical, than that of a ship floating in isolation on the sea during the obscurity of the night, in the silence of immensity, and under the eye of heaven?   (source)
  • According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his brow; now St. John's long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor — of Satan himself — in his subordinate's form.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets.   (source)
    obscurity = the quality of being dark, dingy, or inconspicuous
  • The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travellinghat by its ribbon in her hand.   (source)
  • The obscurity augmented the acuteness of his hearing; at the slightest sound he rose and hastened to the door, convinced they were about to liberate him, but the sound died away, and Dantes sank again into his seat.   (source)
  • By a chance, which added yet more to the intensity of the darkness, the moon, which was on the wane, did not rise until eleven o'clock, and the streets which the young man traversed were plunged in the deepest obscurity.   (source)
  • The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest.   (source)
    obscurity = darkness
  • ...in the obscure grave.   (source)
    obscure = dark
  • Writings all tending to the great opinion
    That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely
    Caesar's ambition shall be glanced at:   (source)
    obscurely = inconspicuously (not obviously)
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  • Back into obscurity.†   (source)
  • So much of what had been obscure while he faced away was now evident.†   (source)
  • How odd, I thought, that I had so wondered about this woman's self-confidence and my question was being answered on an obscure cable show in a cheap motel at midnight.†   (source)
  • Sofia took a sip of water in order to obscure the hint of gloating on her lips.†   (source)
  • He showed me the yellowed newspaper clippings that made him briefly, obscurely famous.†   (source)
  • The men were wiry, brandishing obscure and expensive sports layers that boasted extra "wicking" properties, or lighter-than-air body weights.†   (source)
  • Whenever divine or monstrous elements mix with the mortal world, they generate Mist, which obscures the vision of humans.†   (source)
  • He tried to grasp the memory, hold on to it, complete the picture with faces, names, a place, but it faded into obscurity.†   (source)
  • My grandfather spoke a language so obscure that even a symbologist can't identify it?†   (source)
  • He spun around, the familiar, icy cold penetrating his insides, fog starting to obscure his vision; more were appearing out of the darkness on every side; they were encircling them.... Herrnione, think of something happy!†   (source)
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  • Then the rain obscures her.†   (source)
  • There was no sound but our breaths bubbling up and obscure thuds from deep inside the ship, pieces of the broken hull knocking in the current.†   (source)
  • She dressed to look good, and I dressed for obscurity.†   (source)
  • He handed her a slip of paper bearing a series of digits and numerals and obscure typographical symbols.†   (source)
  • We were very careful in our obscurity.†   (source)
  • PERSONALLY, I'D BEGIN WITH ONE OF THE BITTEREST—TAKE ALMOST ANYTHING FROM JUDE THE OBSCURE.†   (source)
  • The falling snow will obscure any moonlight.†   (source)
  • While Emily lay in obscurity on the floor, in the shadow of a sofa, with a medical uncle applying an expert tourniquet, a dozen relatives worked to calm her sister.†   (source)
  • A thin stand of oak trees obscures the cornfields that stretch out to the horizon.†   (source)
  • He slumped back down and let his shoulder-length hair obscure his face.†   (source)
  • It's so grimy it's practically opaque, but if I squint I can just make out a few shapes in the obscurity of the cell: a single bed with a flimsy, dirty mattress; a toilet; a bucket that looks like it might be the human equivalent of a dog's water bowl.†   (source)
  • Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the obscurity of legend.†   (source)
  • I kept us on the most obscure back roads I knew, where only our headlights disturbed the darkness.†   (source)
  • "Yes —" I couldn't help feeling gratified, obscurely, that he'd noted this detail, oddly important to me, with its own network of childhood dreams and associations, an emotional chord—"the board is thicker than you'd think.†   (source)
  • Dragon Army will not be an obscure name now.†   (source)
  • At first he had wanted to call it Zeus Pickles & Preserves, but that idea was vetoed because everybody said that Zeus was too obscure and had no local relevance, whereas Paradise did.†   (source)
  • Both of them toiled away in a relatively obscure field without any great hopes for worldly success.†   (source)
  • A brooding mist crept along the valley's floor, almost thick enough to obscure his feet.†   (source)
  • Pumpkin now seemed to be one of the most popular apprentices in Gion, while I remained one of the most obscure.†   (source)
  • She's taller than I am by just a few inches, and though her baggy shirt and pants try to obscure it, I can tell that her body bends and curves like it's supposed to.†   (source)
  • He could see it, ill defined and obscure through the plastic, a nearly amorphous shape.†   (source)
  • He hates that his name is both absurd and obscure, that it has nothing to do with who he is, that it is neither Indian nor American but of all things Russian.†   (source)
  • But these details were obscure to most adults, much less a kid of Colton's young age.†   (source)
  • Stirring all this, I seasoned the mixture with a dash of Yeats's brilliant cynicism and a pinch of Pound's obscure, scholastic arrogance.†   (source)
  • But 10 days after they moved, dudes from the Monte Flores barrio would shoot and run over Wilo several times; his body discovered wedged between metal trash bins in an obscure alley.†   (source)
  • I could have gone on all day expanding the list without getting into anything too obscure.†   (source)
  • You may perhaps think this last part is a bit too obscure, Sophie.†   (source)
  • Yet, the Dean invoked an obscure rule that left expulsion on the table.†   (source)
  • The acrid smoke of the burning grass obscures some of the details.†   (source)
  • My daily ritual included a long walk along Mila Street to a dark, obscure den where the family of the caretaker Jehuda Zyskind lived.†   (source)
  • Here he was, a supposedly obscure offensive lineman, and Charles Barkley knew who he was.†   (source)
  • Inter-dimensional beings feature prominently in many of them—these either created or shaped humanity for its own purposes, or left a message for humans to decipher for obscure reasons of their own.†   (source)
  • The bad guys burned tires—a signal to their comrades to join the fight and a black smoke screen to obscure our vision.†   (source)
  • They went to the cinema a lot, and to museums, and small art galleries featuring the works of struggling obscure painters with foreign names.†   (source)
  • The young maid always looks at the barrel Dede points to as if it were an obscure object whose use is beyond her.†   (source)
  • This forest obscures our view of the river, and any other distance.†   (source)
  • Let us as much as possible, train out creepers, and branches of trees, upon bridges, pulling down and nailing the branches, aiming to obtain shade and reflection of foliage and broken obscuration of water.†   (source)
  • If we could but be positive...be sure that, as she grows, she will be able to stay concealed from the human world—not endanger the safety of our obscurity ....†   (source)
  • With luck a crewman would come down with some obscure malady, and he'd have something interesting to work on for once.†   (source)
  • Because I feel that the problem may have arisen out of some obscure tension between teacher and student, I decided it was advisable to transfer the boy to Mr. Lunser's homeroom.†   (source)
  • The other path held long patches of grey obscurity except for peaks of violence.†   (source)
  • Perhaps Irwin had injured me in some awful, obscure way, and all the while I lay there on Joan's sofa I was really dying.†   (source)
  • First is the American Hop Museum, which bills itself as "the nation's only hop museum dedicated to showcasing the history of the obscure perennial vine bearing the botanical name Humulus lupulus."†   (source)
  • But in time he came to suppose that perhaps its disorder obeyed an obscure determination of Divine Providence.†   (source)
  • I motioned to Erik, who gave a quick bow, ready to go back into obscurity.†   (source)
  • There were other shapes, still obscure, that would soon be turning solid and sharp.†   (source)
  • His great round head, set as it was on a small-limbed and squattish body, gave him the look of a primitive clay figurine, some household idol of obscure and cultic derivation.†   (source)
  • Obscurely, deeply, he was stung.†   (source)
  • Photo after photo, as if he could stop time or make an image powerful enough to obscure the moment when he turned and handed his daughter to Caroline Gill.†   (source)
  • Monet's history is a little obscure.†   (source)
  • The city became the headquarters for roughly sixty religious organizations, some of them large, some of them painfully obscure.†   (source)
  • In summation, I said, "The exchanges between Mr. de Klerk and me should not obscure one important fact.†   (source)
  • A cold wind blew somewhere in me, lifting little leaves of terror and obscure longing.†   (source)
  • For the really obscure ones, I had to enlist this guy one of my employees knows from his Anger Management class who's some kind of music freak.†   (source)
  • Then, the following year, we came across an obscure but meticulous demographic study that outlined a human rights violation that had claimed tens of thousands more lives.†   (source)
  • Word slowly began to spread in the obscure "classical music is all-important" grapevine that constituted her father's life.†   (source)
  • The answers, once so clear, were becoming more obscure.†   (source)
  • AFTER EIGHT MONTHS spent in the obscurity of our mother's womb, my brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954.†   (source)
  • They play the classics and run programs devoted to different directors or genres or obscure Brazilian actresses or whatever.†   (source)
  • Mr. Clutter seldom encountered trespassers on his property; a mile and a half from the highway, and arrived at by obscure roads, it was not a place that strangers came upon by chance.†   (source)
  • Do you know any orphan girls who've been plucked from obscurity and made into duchesses?†   (source)
  • Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight.†   (source)
  • He spoke the words with a bitter pleasure, as if the situation satisfied him in some obscure way.†   (source)
  • Granted, some of them—Oona and Glynnis, Florian and Kia—are bound to remain obscure.†   (source)
  • An obscure journalist had once even urged him to seek help for his sex addiction.†   (source)
  • We had finally come upon an obscure wooden sign: Sparrow Ridge.†   (source)
  • Of late the old man's bodily health had mended suddenly, almost marvellously; but he remained vacant, childish in mind, and so far the authorities had retained him, hoping to probe in some way to the obscure, moving cause of his malady.†   (source)
  • A loose black scarf obscures my face, and my dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, conceals both my slaves' cuffs and the Commandant's mark, still scabbed and painful.†   (source)
  • After St. Louis, with its noise and activity, its trucks and buses, and loud family gatherings, I welcomed the obscure lanes and lonely bungalows set back deep in dirt yards.†   (source)
  • Delay, obscure, prevaricate.†   (source)
  • Somewhere between one more killing in the inner city and the obscurity of the grave, is a wall in Brooklyn.†   (source)
  • This matters to him, I think—to feel, at least occasionally, that he doctors in obscurity, so that he knows he doctors first of all because he believes it's the right thing to do.†   (source)
  • And to an audience stilled with awe, he distributed certified photostatic copies of the obscure regulation on which he had built his unforgettable triumph.†   (source)
  • He stops so abruptly a cloud of dust temporarily obscures his feet.†   (source)
  • His wit was hatpin sharp; he was absentminded; he was a bachelor but gave the impression of harboring amusing memories; he possessed a yellow cat nineteen years old; he was incomprehensible to most of Maycomb County because his conversation was colored with subtle allusions to Victorian obscurities.†   (source)
  • He was struck by the obscure idea that he must be floating through a dream.†   (source)
  • I must therefore be contented to live and die an ignorant, obscure fellow.†   (source)
  • In the former, he would be fulfilling his role as a filial son; in the latter, he would leap from the obscurity of our little county to such fame that the whole of China would know him.†   (source)
  • I make it to the relative obscurity of the building's overhang and reach for the door handle and pull.†   (source)
  • Once, the narrow lane that led to them from an obscure country road near Loenen had been tidily gravelled; now it was a couple of faint ruts either side of a meandering strip of tall grass.†   (source)
  • Obscurity's important.†   (source)
  • The breeze was dying away, but huge clouds were gathering from all directions to obscure the first stars of evening.†   (source)
  • Although the pain obscures Raffe's warmth, I feel the pressure of his hug, the rocking of our bodies back and forth as he repeats the word, "No."†   (source)
  • Ones such as I had been before I found Brotherhood-birds of passage who were too obscure for learned classification, too silent for the most sensitive recorders of sound; of natures too ambiguous for the most ambiguous words, and too distant from the centers of historical decision to sign or even to applaud the signers of historical documents?†   (source)
  • But at a million miles, it is completely obscure, because radiant energy decreases according to the fourth power of the radius.†   (source)
  • He descended into obscurity just as he had risen from it.†   (source)
  • Usually I did not understand the words in operas, whether because of our obscure dialect or theirs I didn't know, but I heard one line sung out into the night air in a woman's voice high and clear as ice.†   (source)
  • Our argument ended in a draw; we agreed that the passage was obscure and that as it stood it could be explained either way.†   (source)
  • The night all around is thick and obscure.†   (source)
  • She shakes her head and, obscurely, he feels ashamed.†   (source)
  • I believe in the art of generations of pit-men working in relative obscurity to keep alive the craft of slow-smoking as it's been practiced for as long as there's been fire.†   (source)
  • I went to the front door, peered out through the snow, saw the kids out there, obscure little figures sliding and throwing snowballs.†   (source)
  • Ellis Wyatt's father had managed to squeeze an obscure living to the end of his days, out of the dying oil wells.†   (source)
  • It stood the crystal shard upright on the grass and stepped back, bellowing forth the obscure words of an ancient spell, rising to a crescendo as the sky began to brighten with the sun's imminent appearance.†   (source)
  • Will your clients swear to the existence of this obscure field dialect today?†   (source)
  • 'Yes, but it didn't mean anything, except that there were two parts of it and a lot of water,' Petra told her, in words and obscurely.†   (source)
  • The vast white bed obscures him.†   (source)
  • Brando read Ceremony , and later when I worked on a film project for him, he sometimes brought up obscure details from Ceremony that I hardly remembered; he had a photographic memory for anything he saw or read.†   (source)
  • He'd probably answer it with an obscure quote from The Tibetan Book of the Dead or gibberish about runic interpretations, but there was a chance he'd really think about it, and then we might get somewhere.†   (source)
  • And the shield of beautiful flowers did nothing to obscure for her the image of the body inside.†   (source)
  • These obscure subjects puzzle the greatest political science experts.†   (source)
  • I pull in across the wide stretch of blacktop and although I have my choice I park perhaps a dozen spaces from the open spots nearest the entrance, and I wish I could obscure myself somehow as I walk to the grandly hideous, domed building, the lone customer heading inside.†   (source)
  • Reynolds chose to write about an obscure military college located inan obscure Southern state.†   (source)
  • The writers of these letters ranged from the prominent to the obscure.†   (source)
  • Mr. Black goes on about how he wants us to feel free to choose the places that strike our fancy, no matter how obscure or far away.†   (source)
  • The first was from an obscure cell in lawless Libya, followed soon after by al—†   (source)
  • The second note lies obscurely under a streak of ketchup, or catsup, but the third is electric.†   (source)
  • From obscure philatelic journals furnished her by Genghis Cohen, an ambiguous footnote in Motleys Rise of the Dutch Republic, an 80-year-old pamphlet on the roots of modern anarchism, a book of sermons by Blobb's brother Augustine also among Bortz's Wharfingeriana, along with Blobb's original clues, Oedipa was able to fit together this account of how the organization began: In 1577, the northern provinces of the Low Countries, led by the Protestant noble William of Orange, had been struggling nine years for independence from Catholic Spain and a Catholic Holy Roman Emperor.†   (source)
  • Their meaning was obscure to me, but they were certainly connected with a general feeling of good will, anticipation and high spirits.†   (source)
  • In the shower's obscurity, all I could see was a black shadow and gleaming white teeth.†   (source)
  • Since this was a weekday morning, the only persons who were at liberty to be in the park were either children, who had nothing to occupy them, or those older people whose lives are obscure, irregular, and consciously of no worth to anything: this I put down as my observation at that time.†   (source)
  • A strange sorcery which I could never quite pin down, it had to do both with her Europeanness and something that was obscurely, seductively maternal.†   (source)
  • Sir Douglas Froude had commanded the army before he was born and had retired soon after that event, fading from great affairs into the obscurity of a small property near Macedon, where he had raised sheep and tried to write his memoirs.†   (source)
  • She apparently had some objection to taking part in the proceedings, which had caused Benny to make obscurely sarcastic remarks about people who still took the Talmud seriously.†   (source)
  • Then they rode through the gateway and were gone, leaving behind only the physician and three warriors, whom he was to treat an additional day for an obscure condition having to do with the change of climate, before they rode on to catch up with the others.†   (source)
  • In the clearing's yellow light the black hat and glasses made Freeman seem obscurely dangerous now, anyway alien, more in league with the woods—or with Mars, it might be—than with them.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Freeman would take on strange resentments and for days together she would be sullen but the source of her displeasure was always obscure; a direct attack, a positive leer, blatant ugliness to her face-these never touched her.†   (source)
  • Obscurity's what I have need of now.†   (source)
  • If he can enlighten me on these obscure and delicate points, I'd be only too delighted.†   (source)
  • In search of quiet, seclusion, and obscurity.†   (source)
  • The oldest of them began to be obscurely ashamed, as well as bored.†   (source)
  • The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, the event in which the obscure Ross was to play such a dramatic role, was the sensational climax to the bitter struggle between the President, determined to carry out Abraham Lincoln's policies of reconciliation with the defeated South, and the more radical Republican leaders in Congress, who sought to administer the downtrodden Southern states as conquered provinces which had forfeited their rights under the Constitution.†   (source)
  • Please fake obscure visual problems and beg for help.†   (source)
  • It was hardly fair, they felt obscurely, to listen, to advise, to act as a sort of universal shoulder for the world to weep on, and give back nothing of her own.†   (source)
  • The place smelled musty, unaired, obscurely tired.†   (source)
  • Salamander Army is just beginning to emerge from indecent obscurity.†   (source)
  • There is some obscurity around this: it is not talked of much.†   (source)
  • Between Ice and Fire is Mist, G-i-n-n-u-n-g-a-g-a-p. Obscures appearances.†   (source)
  • Hecate offers you obscurity, choices, vague promises of magic.†   (source)
  • But then you wouldn't have the obscurity you so desire in your regained civilized life.'†   (source)
  • He had a key, a fact he was obscurely proud of.†   (source)
  • He swings the door open and walks to the row of trunks that obscures Camel.†   (source)
  • There are fewer and fewer openings into the vast obscurity of her nature.†   (source)
  • The obscurity usually exists in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner, not in the subject.†   (source)
  • There was something sad and lonely in her whole aspect, which obscurely troubled him.†   (source)
  • There is an even greater obscurity between the objects in each category of nature.†   (source)
  • The now calming ocean, the pounding of a thousand gentlenesses, went on into darkness and obscurity.†   (source)
  • Let us hope that, at the conclusion of your investigations, you will be able to add to their number, and to shed light on a puzzling obscurity; for which society will give you due recognition, I am sure.†   (source)
  • The windows of the vans are dark-tinted, and the men in the front seats wear dark glasses: a double obscurity.†   (source)
  • A magical force called the Mist obscures the true appearance of monsters and gods from their vision, so mortals tend to see only what they can understand.†   (source)
  • In the obscurity of the Secret Archives, Langdon stood amidst shattered glass and tried to catch his breath.†   (source)
  • Backdrop to the Kilanga pageant, rising up behind the houses, a tall wall of elephant grass obscures our view of anything but the distance.†   (source)
  • Cartographers create fictional landmarks, streets, and municipalities and place them obscurely into their maps.†   (source)
  • Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.†   (source)
  • We make so many twists and turns I'm beginning to wonder if Alex is lost, especially as the hallways grow dirtier, and the lights above us become fewer in number, so that eventually we are walking through murk and obscurity, with a single functioning bulb to light up twenty feet of blackened stone corridor.†   (source)
  • "This amazing child"—he lifted his hand palm down as if to rest it on Renesmee, though he was forty yards from her now, almost within the Volturi formation again—"if we could but know her potential—know with absolute certainty that she could always remain shrouded within the obscurity that protects us.†   (source)
  • And he saw everything, collected movie posters and lobby cards, could recite the filmographies of the obscurest directors because the more obscure the figure, of course, the more valuable the knowledge.†   (source)
  • Each end was usually clogged with tense spectators and relatives, for the ritual was usually fore-cast with great accuracy-eighteen was the most common age (those who had not made their test by the age of twenty-five usually slipped into obscurity as freeholders, unable to face the brutal all-or-nothing fact of the field and the test).†   (source)
  • In fact, I consider myself average in most respects, and even thirty years ago, I knew I was destined for neither fame nor obscurity.†   (source)
  • Simon felt obscurely scolded.†   (source)
  • I must remember where I am-thought Dagny, clenching her fists under the tablecloth, in the obscurity of a side table.†   (source)
  • It had previously been owned by a director of the Asea Brown Boveri power company, who slipped into obscurity after he got himself a much-discussed and much-criticized golden parachute of several billion kronor.†   (source)
  • The fountain obscures us and I don't think anyone from school would be out here anyway, but I still worry about being seen or, more problematically, heard in public.†   (source)
  • Tom Smith had found the horse who would lift him from obscurity: On an August day in 1936, Seabiscuit was led from the Fitzsimmons barn for the last time.†   (source)
  • In the wake of these events, Murrow agreed to pay out of his pocket the necessary expenses to finish production on a handful of remaining essays, and in April 1955, This I Believe distributed its last program to stations and slowly receded into obscurity.†   (source)
  • He watched the boy's strange mechanical walk, the lazy obscurity of each step, the ploddingness, and he felt both sadness and pride.†   (source)
  • He had been terribly frightened, obscurely and profoundly frightened, but he had not, as the years were to prove, been frightened enough.†   (source)
  • He had owned a cigarette factory once, but it had gone bankrupt, and he had resigned himself to the lonely obscurity of his little stand in the midst of an eternal whirlpool of strangers.†   (source)
  • A sharp right-turn ahead obscures his view when he turns the corner there is disappointment the tunnel continues on no end in sight only the dimensions have shrunk.†   (source)
  • Recognizing the talent dormant in the horse and in one another, they began a rehabilitation of Seabiscuit that would lift him, and them, from obscurity.†   (source)
  • Obscurity comes from (1) the complexity of the subjects, (2) human imperfections, and (3) the medium [i.†   (source)
  • She said, and knew, obscurely, as she said it, that she was making a mistake, was delivering herself up, "Stop torturing yourself about Vivaldo we have not been sleeping together."†   (source)
  • But he could not hold her tightly enough; she clung to him urgently as he stroked her hair, and he was obscurely frightened, because it was not like her, and because he felt beneath them a fault, imperceptibly widening, threatening.†   (source)
  • It had been a struggle without the relief of violence, without the recognition of finding a conscious enemy, with only a deaf wall to batter, a wall of the most effective soundproofing: indifference, that swallowed blows, chords and screams-a battle of silence, for a man who could give to sounds a greater eloquence than they had ever carried-the silence of obscurity, of loneliness, of the nights when some rare orchestra played one of his works and he looked at the darkness, knowing that his soul went in trembling, widening circles from a radio tower through the air of the city, but there were no receivers tuned to hear it.†   (source)
  • The man who retires from public life, to think, but not to share his thoughts-the man who chooses to spend his years in the obscurity of menial employment, keeping to himself the fire of his mind, never giving it form, expression or reality, refusing to bring it into a world he despises-the man who is defeated by revulsion, the man who renounces before he has started, the man who gives up rather than give in, the man who functions at a fraction of his capacity, disarmed by his longing for an ideal he has not found-they are on strike, on strike against unreason, on strike against your world and your values.†   (source)
  • Not the haughty heirs of famous names more than the humble sons of obscurity without a family fortune.†   (source)
  • The reason orphans were the way they were lay first in nobody's watching them, Nina thought, for she felt obscurely like a trespasser.†   (source)
  • They preferred the warmth and obscurity of the pubic region, where they could hide and suck without detection.†   (source)
  • She gives him a sidelong glance, and is affected by the lack of any arrogance in him, touched by something obscurely warm, vulnerable—is it only a kind of loneliness?†   (source)
  • But it was clear to both of them that things were better now than they had been before; they could hear it in his voice, which at once enchanted and obscurely disturbed them, and they could hear it in the voices of the two women, which now and again, when he seemed to pause for breath, chimed in with a short word or two, a few times with whole sentences.†   (source)
  • They thrilled every fiber of his body, shifted his mind to a higher gear than it normally used (as if some door opened, as doors occasionally opened in his dreams, revealing, beyond some mundane room, vast recesses obscurely lighted and charged with warm wind and a deep red color, beautiful and alarming): he thought them dangerous, possibly mortal, like the shocking pleasure (he imagined) of falling from a roof.†   (source)
  • The other three couples have come to the island to enjoy their retirement in the obscurity of the island's remotest corners.†   (source)
  • He set his teeth to bear it, feeling obscurely that it was in some way his fault, because of the hardships of her life; but sometimes he would rush from the house, inarticulate with irritation.†   (source)
  • I dwelt amidst the fascists and the flag-wavers in relative obscurity and I liked the students, who daily trooped into my class chewing gum and popping pimples.†   (source)
  • I had often fantasized myself as being the world's greatest undiscovered poet, living in obscurity and biding my time until the seeds of greatness germinated and I would cast poems to the world.†   (source)
  • Why would the prophets—the greatest teachers in history—obscure their language?†   (source)
  • Her hair falls over her face just enough to obscure her cheeks.†   (source)
  • Flames and heavy black smoke from the wreckage obscure our view.†   (source)
  • It would take more than the passage of three years to obscure the memory of the Ewen-Stadler game.†   (source)
  • He has the gift of knowledge sometimes kept obscure from my Oracle.†   (source)
  • Among an obscure tribe in a backwater of West Asia on the confines of a long-vanished empire?†   (source)
  • The smoldering leaves produced great rafts of smoke that drifted up to obscure the nest.†   (source)
  • I have come to obscure the light, Mal'akh thought.†   (source)
  • Her answer would be so obscure or ambiguous that the priests would have to interpret it.†   (source)
  • I went with him to poorly attended lectures on obscure Philadelphia cabinet-makers of the 1770s.†   (source)
  • Few people bother doing that nowadays, so the expression has started to feel outdated, even obscure.†   (source)
  • But his inner thoughts, his motives, were frequently obscure to me.†   (source)
  • He had banished it to some obscure chapel across town.†   (source)
  • I start a small fire, counting on the mist to obscure any telltale smoke.†   (source)
  • But to the general fan he remained obscure.†   (source)
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