obscure

in a sentence

grouped by contextual meaning

Our view was obscured by the smoke.

Watanabe donned glasses to obscure his features and headed off, filled with trepidation.  (source) Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken, 2010

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) Tara Westover, Educated, 2018

But now the rapidly deepening snow obscured the narrow road and made the ride impossible.  (source) Lois Lowry, The Giver, 1993

There was a light mist blowing, partially obscuring the building that loomed directly above them.  (source) Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, 1993

And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth.  (source) Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men, 1955

"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) Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, 1962

This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand.†  (source) Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Sometimes their way led them under the shade of an overhanging bank or through the thin obscurity of a clump of leafless trees.  (source) Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, 1911

The decay of Sense in men waking, is not the decay of the motion made in sense; but an obscuring of it, in such manner, as the light of the Sun obscureth the light of the Starres; which starrs do no less exercise their vertue by which they are visible, in the day, than in the night.†  (source) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651

His face was obscured by a mop of dirty blond hair,  (source) Ernest Cline, Ready Player One, 2011

The mist came first. It closed in wet and heavy, obscuring the cliffs, then the sky itself.  (source) Madeline Miller, Circe, 2018

A thin stand of oak trees obscures the cornfields that stretch out to the horizon.†  (source) John Green, Paper Towns, 2008

She left instructions for us, but they are so obscure we can't agree on what they are.

She sat obscurely in the far corner of the room.

There were just drawings, coded instructions, and obscure texts. "Why do they make things so complicated?" he asked the Englishman one night.  (source) Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, 1988

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) Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, 1996

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) William Golding, Lord of the Flies, 1954

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) Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, 1936

Even Bilbo was given a seat at the high table, and no explanation of where he came in—no songs had alluded to him even in the obscurest way—was asked for in the general bustle.  (source) J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, 1937

They liked and they marvelled at everything, most of all at the unceasing chatter of their quaint old driver, in whose speech archaic Russian forms, Tartar idioms, and local oddities of diction were punctuated with obscurities of his own invention.†  (source) Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, 1958

The newcomers were being shown the striking or obscurer tokens of the plague, relics of its passage.†  (source) Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947

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) Tara Westover, Educated, 2018

I was filled with a wordless, obscurely murderous unrest.  (source) John Gardner, Grendel, 1971

Oh! but dear Miss Woodhouse, she is now in such retirement, such obscurity, so thrown away.  (source) Jane Austen, Emma, 1815

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) Don DeLillo, Underworld, 1997

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.

We were constantly trying to out-geek each other with our knowledge of obscure gunter trivia.  (source) Ernest Cline, Ready Player One, 2011

And Procompsognathus is an obscure animal.  (source) Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, 1993

You will live a life of obscurity.  (source) Madeline Miller, Circe, 2018

Then, compelled to quit Rome, he went and got himself obscurely killed in a night skirmish, scarcely noticed in history.  (source) Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, 1846

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) Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, 1911

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) Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, 1996

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) Nicole Krauss, The History of Love, 2005

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) F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925

Turning down an obscure street and entering an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop.  (source) Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874

Did they know they were giving him obscure but excellent boys?  (source) Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game, 1977

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) George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912

The jungle became obscure as the sun set.

The savage peered into the obscurity beneath the thicket.  (source) William Golding, Lord of the Flies, 1954

Everything was scrupulously clean, as if the owner spent his leisure time digging in obscure crannies for minuscule pieces of filth.  (source) Christopher Paolini, Eragon, 2003

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) Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men, 1943

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) Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, 1920

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) Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City, 2003

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) Agatha Christie, Early Cases Of Hercule Poirot, 1935

Lowest place Is that of all, obscurest, and remov'd Farthest from heav'n's all-circling orb.  (source) Dante Alighieri, Dante's Inferno, 1320

In the obscurity I could see he made a gesture of despair.  (source) H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898

In the midst of all this the lamp still cast a smoky glow, obscure and brown as umber.  (source) Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, 1883

The outlines of myths and tales are subject to damage and obscuration.†  (source) Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 1949

Writings all tending to the great opinion That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely Caesar's ambition shall be glanced at:  (source) William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1599

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) Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1846