All 4 Uses of
obscure
in
The Great Gatsby
- 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.
p. 23.6obscure = not known to many people; or undistinguished
- Blinking away the brightness of the street outside, my eyes picked him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to another man.
p. 69.4 *obscurely = in a manner that was not clear
- 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.
p. 113.2obscurely = in an unknown or undistinguished manner
- 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.
p. 180.8 *obscurity = less commonly known
Definitions:
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(1)
(obscure as in: it obscured my view) to block from view or make less visible or understandableAlthough this meaning of obscure typically refers to seeing or understanding, it can also refer to situation where something makes something else harder to detect or as when a noise makes another noise difficult to hear. Similarly it can reference something overshadowing something else, as in "Her memory of her dog's death was obscured by her brother's death the next day."
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(2)
(obscure as in: the view or directions are obscure) not clearly seen, understood, or expressedAlthough this meaning of obscure typically refers to seeing or understanding, it can refer to difficulty with any type of detection as when something is hard to hear. It can also more specifically mean vague, or mysterious, or unknown by anyone. Much more rarely, it can mean secretive.
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(3)
(obscure as in: the famous and the obscure) not known to many people; or unimportant or undistinguishedMore rarely, this meaning of obscure can be used for:
- seemingly unimportant -- as in "I want her on the team. She always seems to ask obscure questions that reveal problems in a different light."
- humble (typically only found in classic literature) -- as in "Nobody at the table would have guessed of her obscure family background."
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(4)
(obscure as in: was obscure, but now bright) dark or dingy; or inconspicuous (not very noticeable)This meaning of obscure is more commonly seen in classic literature than in modern writing.
- (5) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)