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Definition of obfuscate
obfuscated
;obfuscating
transitive verb
1a : to throw into shadow : darkenb : 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.
From the M-W Editors
obfuscate was our Word of the Day on 11/17/2016. Hear the podcast!
Theme music by Joshua Stamper ©2006 New Jerusalem Music/ASCAP
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
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Or are fivethirtyeight.com's writers obfuscating the only numbers that matter: 44-39 (18-23 at home) and 0.5 games ahead of second-place Kansas City?
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The horror overlaying the Orlando shooting, and all mass shootings, obfuscates the patterns and predictors of these violent attacks.
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But a series of top Trump aides have dodged, spun and obfuscated when asked whether the President believes climate change is happening.
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To obfuscate its activity, the original file on the file server remains unchanged; it is only modified/replaced while in transit from the pandemic file server before being executed on the computer of the remote user.
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Yes, Trump can delay, prevaricate, obfuscate, annoy and even shut down federal science.
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The Moroccan and Jordanian monarchies are flaunting their nondemocratic model after decades of obfuscating it behind the veil of reform.
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This trailer does a decent job of obfuscating the major plots points of the film.
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Instead, the Republicans are covering for Donald Trump by playing up tangential stories that obfuscate the issue at hand: that Donald Trump’s national security advisor was compromised by the Russian government.
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.
Did You Know?
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.
OBFUSCATE Defined for English Language Learners
obfuscate
playDefinition of obfuscate for English Language Learners
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: to make (something) more difficult to understand
Learn More about obfuscate
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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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