obfuscate

verb ob·fus·cate \ ˈäb-fə-ˌskāt ; äb-ˈfə-ˌskāt , əb- \

|Updated on: 15 Aug 2018

Examples: obfuscate in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Try to Understand the Roots of obfuscate

Definition of obfuscate

obfuscated; obfuscating

transitive verb

1 a : to throw into shadow : darken

b : to make obscure

obfuscate the issue

officials who … continue to obscure and obfuscate what happened
—Mary Carroll

2 : confuse

obfuscate the reader

intransitive verb

: to be evasive, unclear, or confusing

The suspect often obfuscated during the interrogation.

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obfuscation

play \ˌäb-(ˌ)fə-ˈskā-shən\ noun

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obfuscatory

play \äb-ˈfə-skə-ˌtȯr-ē, əb-\ adjective

See obfuscate defined for English-language learners

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Examples of obfuscate in a Sentence

Politicians keep obfuscating the issues.
Their explanations only serve to obfuscate and confuse.

Recent Examples of obfuscate from the Web

For nearly a month at this World Cup, Russia had managed to bend, tweak and obfuscate one simple fact—a state secret hidden in plain sight.

— joshua robinson, WSJ, "Russia Is Out of the Russian World Cup," 7 July 2018
Liberals leading the charge against Mr. Trump’s potential picks quickly dismissed Ms. Collins’s remarks, suggesting that the senator was either being hoodwinked or knowingly obfuscating her position.

— nicholas fandos, New York Times, "Susan Collins, Pivotal Moderate, Says ‘Hostility’ to Roe Would Sway Her Vote," 1 July 2018
Officials in Pyongyang are seeking to obfuscate the true number of their weapons facilities, and U.S. intelligence officials believe that more than just one hidden site exists.

— author: ellen nakashima, joby warrick, Anchorage Daily News, "North Korea plotting to keep arsenal, U.S. intelligence officials say," 1 July 2018
The legal process could also force companies to reveal incriminating information about their efforts to obfuscate their role in global warming.

— umair irfan, Vox, "Why Colorado thinks it has a chance to make oil companies pay for climate change," 5 July 2018
One of the similarities between the recent phishing campaigns and the ones leading up to Olympic Destroyer is a technique to obfuscate malicious Powershell commands.

— dan goodin, Ars Technica, "Hackers who sabotaged the Olympic games return for more mischief," 19 June 2018
The complexity, along with the Kim regime's history of obfuscating its true plans, will make for a massive challenge, even if everything goes right at the June 12 summit in Singapore and in the months after that.

— jenna mclaughlin, CNN, "Getting the deal is only half the Battle: US fears fact-checking Kim Jong Un post summit," 10 June 2018
Others have worked just as hard to obfuscate what is really going on at their schools.

— valerie strauss, Washington Post, "Betsy DeVos: Nothing Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush did in education reform really worked," 16 Jan. 2018
Maple syrup and vanilla obfuscate any hint of the absurdly high 14.3 percent ABV, making this liquid candy of a beer best enjoyed in small doses.

— SFChronicle.com, "The beers and whiskeys of Seven Stills," 1 July 2018

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

Try to Understand the Roots of obfuscate

To obfuscate something means to make it so that it isn't clear or transparent, much like dirty water makes it hard to see to the bottom of a pond. The verb shares its ob- root (meaning "over, completely") with obscure, another word that can refer to the act of concealing something or making it more difficult to see or understand. The rest of obfuscate comes from Latin fuscus, which means "dark brown" and is distantly related to our word dusk.