murky

adjective

\ ˈmər-kē

murkier; murkiest

Definition of murky

1 : characterized by a heavy dimness or obscurity caused by or like that caused by overhanging fog or smoke the murky bottom of the lake

2 : characterized by thickness and heaviness of air : foggy, misty rain poured down from murky skies — Newsweek

3 : darkly vague or obscure murky official rhetoric He offered a murky explanation.

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Examples of murky in a Sentence

She peered into one of the church's murky chapels. a politician with a murky past

Recent Examples on the Web

The waters around the Farallon Islands are murky, and great whites have been seen escaping the area even when their adversaries were far beyond sight or hearing range. — Jason G. Goldman, Scientific American, "Orcas May Turn Great White Sharks into Scaredy Cats," 8 July 2019 Electroactive bacteria for hire Much about these microbes remains murky, and subject to debate. — New York Times, "Wired Bacteria Form Nature’s Power Grid: ‘We Have an Electric Planet’," 1 July 2019 The history of the census and ethnicity, and even where this question is concerned, is still murky. — Jess Mchugh, Fortune, "The U.S. Census Has a Long History of Discrimination," 20 June 2019 In the middle of the jubilant atmosphere, in water that seems much too shallow and much too murky, two dolphins swim listlessly in circles. — Natasha Daly, National Geographic, "Suffering unseen: The dark truth behind wildlife tourism," 12 June 2019 And yet there’s something genuinely nerve-racking when human beings go down into the sometimes murky, sometimes swirly deep and fit themselves into underwater caves or the disorienting, tight spaces of a sideways wreck. — Robert Lloyd, latimes.com, "Review: New shows from Adam Savage, Gordon Ramsay and the Cousteaus make expertise sexy again," 12 June 2019 The book opens with an assassination in a hotel, a murky, John le Carré-world sort of event. — Dwight Garner, New York Times, "‘The Capital’ Is a Sharp Political Satire About Europe at This Perilous Moment," 10 June 2019 The answer: murky, but again leaning in favor of a wetter summer. — Chris Bianchi, The Denver Post, "Colorado weather: Does a wet spring mean a wet summer for the Front Range?," 8 June 2019 Just to give a sense of the variation among them, however, they can be described in this way: Bing Woo, born into a family that quickly fell on hard times, was given or sold (the details are murky) to first one and then another couple. — Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, WSJ, "‘Last Boat Out of Shanghai’ Review: Gone With the Wind," 18 Jan. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'murky.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.