Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of obscurants or obscurantism.
  • noun One who opposes the cultivation and diffusion of knowledge; an obscurant.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Same as obscurant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A practitioner of obscurantism; an obscurant

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a person who is deliberately vague

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

obscurant +‎ -ist

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Examples

  • Benton: neither 'obscurantist' nor 'absolutist' are proper words

    Kirk Cameron attempts to debunk Darwin 2009

  • It can not afford to leave the country and will "do everything possible" to ensure that the "obscurantist" Taliban-like forces do not regain control there and democracy prevails, even though it has no plans to send its troops there.

    News 2010

  • First sternly prohibited by Frelimo from carrying on the "obscurantist" practices of traditional culture, and then driven by the war from their land and the hard-won histories of feminine community rooted in generations of shared agrarian routines, and then facing the formidable challenge of postwar recovery as structural adjustment and market reforms wreaked economic havoc in the countryside 7in these circumstances, the spheres of social life in which women could claim to exercise authority over the present, let alone the past, were few indeed.

    Where Women Make History: Gendered Tellings of Community and Change in Magude, Mozambique 2005

  • And yes, as a monograph on anything such writing would be childish and obscurantist.

    Matthew Yglesias » A People’s History of the United States 2010

  • This was not, I hasten to add, what Derrida himself believed, but unfortunately what was most often represented as "Derridean" was indeed this sort of anti-intellectual nonsense (its anti-intellectualism disguised by much obscurantist theory-ese), the result of which, finally, was the complete loss of credibility on the part of academic literary study and, unfortunately, the labeling of Derrida as the obscurantist-in-chief.

    Philosophy and Literature 2009

  • It seems to the philisophically-naive scientists that these philosophers are inventing a new problem in a desperate and obscurantist attempt to salvage a belief in human "dignity."

    September 13th, 2009 m_francis 2009

  • But in their rush to save Christianity, some evangelicals have been guilty of all sorts of strained, idiosyncratic or obscurantist tactics: massaging or distorting the data, manipulating the legal system, scaring their constituencies and strong-arming those of their own camp who raise questions.

    Pete Enns: Once More, With Feeling: Adam, Evolution And Evangelicals Pete Enns 2012

  • Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: I actually find Structure of Scientific Revolutions a bit obscurantist in some respects that encourages misreadings.

    Matthew Yglesias » Influential Books 2010

  • I dealt with Sally Katzen professionally during the Clinton Administration, and I found her to be defensive, obscurantist, impatient, and dedicated towards reaching particular outcomes regardless of the facts.

    Matthew Yglesias » Cass Sunstein to OIR 2009

  • But they are not users of the obscurantist gobbledygook employed by academics who, frankly, cannot really write.

    Film Criticism Is Dying? Not Online Roger Ebert 2011

Comments

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  • Also, a person who opposes reform and enlightenment.

    July 26, 2008