Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of obfuscating or obscuring; also, that which obscures; obscurity; confusion.

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

  • noun The act of darkening or bewildering; the state of being darkened.

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

  • noun uncountable The act or process of obfuscating, or obscuring the perception of something; the concept of concealing the meaning of a communication by making it more confusing and harder to interpret.
  • noun uncountable Confusion, bewilderment, or a baffled state resulting from something obfuscated, or made more opaque and muddled with the intent to obscure information.
  • noun countable A single instance of intentionally obscuring the meaning of something to make it more difficult to grasp.
  • noun computing, uncountable The option to alter computer code, preserving its behavior but concealing its structure and intent.

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

  • noun the activity of obscuring people's understanding, leaving them baffled or bewildered
  • noun confusion resulting from failure to understand
  • noun darkening or obscuring the sight of something

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin obfuscationem (15th century), from Latin obfuscare ("to darken"), from ob ("over") + fuscāre ("to make dark"), from fuscus ("dark")

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word obfuscation.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • from a recent conversation of mine with a bot...

    Seanahan: Hi. What's up?

    Bot: October.

    Seanahan: You are the computer.

    Bot: No, you are.

    Seanahan: Oh no I'm not!

    Bot: Bald obfuscation. I expected better.

    Seanahan: I'm leaving.

    Bot: Shall I open the door?

    Seanahan: It's midnight... And it's so dark...

    Bot: If it wasn't dark it probably wouldn't be midnight.

    Seanahan: You are not a real person.

    October 15, 2008

  • Ha ha!

    See midnight.

    October 15, 2008

  • Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

    October 15, 2008

  • My dad used this word in conversation the other day - and I had to look it up.

    A good word that most people don't know :)

    May 5, 2009

  • Eschew obfuscation!

    October 10, 2010