Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Easy to notice; obvious.
- adj. Attracting attention, as by being unusual or remarkable; noticeable. See Synonyms at noticeable.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Open to the view; catching the eye; easy to be seen; manifest.
- Obvious to the mind; readily attracting or forcing itself upon the attention; clearly or extensively known, perceived, or understood; striking.
- Hence Eminent; notable; distinguished: as, a man of conspicuous talents; a woman of conspicuous virtues.
- Synonyms Illustrious, eminent, celebrated, remarkable, marked, notable.
Wiktionary
- adj. Obvious or easy to notice.
- adj. Noticeable or attracting attention, especially if unattractive.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Open to the view; obvious to the eye; easy to be seen; plainly visible; manifest; attracting the eye.
- adj. Obvious to the mental eye; easily recognized; clearly defined; notable; prominent; eminent; distinguished.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. without any attempt at concealment; completely obvious
- adj. obvious to the eye or mind
Etymologies
- From Latin conspicuus ("visible, striking"), from cōnspicere ("to notice"), from con- ("with, together") + specere ("to look at") (Wiktionary)
- From Latin cōnspicuus, from cōnspicere, to observe : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + specere, to look; see spek- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
““Buffons,” after the title conspicuous on a volume of the Suites a Buffon, [11] which stood on my shelf in the chart room.”
“My brother officers were as good fellows as sailors ought to be and generally are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor cared anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealous in pursuit of the objects which my friends, the middies, † christened “Buffons,” after the title conspicuous on a volume of the Suites a Buffon, ‡ which stood on my shelf in the chart room.”
“In the term conspicuous is included plants that attract general attention.”
“Buffons," after the title conspicuous on a volume of the Suites a Buffon, which stood on my shelf in the chart room.”
“Buffons," after the title conspicuous on a volume of the "Suites a Buffon," which stood on my shelf in the chart-room.”
“My brother officers were as good fellows as sailors ought to be and generally are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor cared anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealous in pursuit of the objects which my friends, the middies, christened "Buffons," after the title conspicuous on a volume of the "Suites a Buffon," which stood on my shelf in the chart-room.”
“Buffons," after the title conspicuous on a volume of the Suites a”
“As he is also an item of expense, and commonly serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in men's regard as a thing of good repute," Veblen wrote in his celebrated Theory of the Leisure Class, the book that brought us the term conspicuous consumption.”
“So the researchers went back to Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term conspicuous consumption.”
““The LDS community is very prone to what we call conspicuous consumption,” he said.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘conspicuous’.
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Visuals
A list of words which yield surprising, beautiful, amusing, or otherwise noteworthy images here on Wordnik.
photochrom, fufluns, thank you, cool l..., postcard, picture postcard, cricket, physiological ill..., Gakuryū Ishii, ametropia, One Froggy Evening, rhodopsin, Santiago Calatrava and 636 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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Daily We
http://bostonreview.net/BR26.3/sunstein.php
proliferation, bear on, boon, feasible, dissent, salience, deliberate, conspicuous, balkanize, restrained, antecedently, opprobrium and 1 more...
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WOOZ
Words contained in the screenplay of Wizard of Oz, 1939 film.
Comments show the actual "line" from the film.
The words are tagged for grade-levelpusillanimous, genuflect, cataclysmic, vernacular, peasantry, aver, caliginous, tedious, advent, careworn, bovine, commodity and 34 more...
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HollieGolightly's list
indigo, flippant, quaint, ebullience, subterfuge, conspicuous, surreptitiously, kodachrome, doppelganger, hullabaloo, nabob, motley and 21 more...
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Aviator's supplement
anybody can add to this list which would help our goal to disperse more words...
raillery, scruples, conspicuous, concupiscent, ramshackled, exultant, innate, condescend, pariah, countenance, ply, vitiate and 6 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Favorites
disparage, partisan, cupidity, hokum, tussle, odious, dastardly, overture, plane, chronic, peering, peer and 328 more...
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Advanced Words: Part II
facetious, felicitous, grandiloquent, germane, repatriate, exigency, exculpate, etheral, fatuous, heterogeneous, hiatus, idiosyncrasy and 118 more...
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SoSheShall's list
slurp, coeur, slurple, glop, perp, fluarxx, ropechno, herrherr, burrduhherrherr, sloppy, cheezie balls, eccentric and 634 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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Week 1, Day 1
ignominy, marquee, deter, chariot, stern, perfidy, treacherous, insolent, presumptuous, banish, dubious, livid and 133 more...
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GRE verbal 1
GRE
hypocrisy, wizened, arcane, nascent, trifling, malaise, quibble, derogatory, inept, recant, splenetic, insouciance and 21 more...
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Wharton, Edith. Age of Innocence. 1920
A list of difficult words for L2-12 learners.
Faust, erection, metropolitan, splendor, shabby, conservatives, cherished, inconvenient, clung, acoustics, coupe, scramble and 261 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for conspicuous.
fbharjo KENSPECKLE. i PRESUME! Aug 6, 2011
dbekeny WIZARD
Well, you can't. As for you, my fine
friend -- you're a victim of disorganized
thinking. You are under the unfortunate
delusion that simply because you run away
from danger, you have no courage. You're
confusing courage with wisdom. Back where
I come from, we have men who are called
heroes. Once a year, they take their
fortitude out of mothballs and parade it
down the main street of the city. And they
have no more courage than you have. But!
They have one thing that you haven't got!
A medal! Therefore -- for meritorious....
conduct, extraordinary valor, conspicuous
bravery against wicked witches, I award you
the Triple Cross.
Jun 10, 2010
BrainyBabe Her experiences in London had led her to believe that the best way of not exciting suspicion was to make oneself conspicuous. -- ''Yashima, or, The Gorgeous West'' by R T Sherwood, 1931. Dec 24, 2008
sonofgroucho I like the expression "conspicuous by its absence", but some may regard it as a cliché. May 26, 2007
kenspeckle Kenspeckle is far superior. Dec 7, 2006