Both Uses
unobtrusive
in
The Purloined Letter
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- These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident.†
*obtrusively = in a manner that attracts undesired attention or imposes on othersstandard prefix: Unobtrusive is encountered more than twice as commonly as any form of obtrusive without the prefix un-. The prefix "un-" in unobtrusively means not and reverses the meaning of obtrusively. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- But, then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D—, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document; these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visiter, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to suspect.†
obtrusive = attracting undesired attention; or imposing on othersstandard prefix: Unobtrusive is encountered more than twice as commonly as any form of obtrusive without the prefix un-. The prefix "un-" in unobtrusive means not and reverses the meaning of obtrusive. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
Definitions:
-
(1)
(unobtrusive) fitting in so as not to attract much attention or disturb
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)