Definition of obfuscate
- obfuscate the issue
- officials who … continue to obscure and obfuscate what happened
- —Mary Carroll
- obfuscate the reader
- The suspect often obfuscated during the interrogation.
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Politicians keep obfuscating the issues.
Their explanations only serve to obfuscate and confuse.
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.
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.
disentangle, straighten (out), undo, unravel, unscramble, untangle;
complicate, perplex, sophisticate;
disarrange, disarray, discompose, dishevel, disorder, disrupt, disturb, jumble, mess (up), mix (up), muddle, scramble, shuffle, tousle, upset;
: to make (something) more difficult to understand
See words that rhyme with obfuscate Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for obfuscate Spanish Central: Translation of obfuscate Nglish: Translation of obfuscate for Spanish speakers
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