obfuscate

play

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

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.

obfuscation

play \ˌäb-(ˌ)fə-ˈskā-shən\ noun

obfuscatory

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

See obfuscate defined for English-language learners

obfuscate was our Word of the Day on 11/17/2016. Hear the podcast!

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

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?

— joe noga, cleveland.com, "Are the Indians playing better than their record indicates, or is that just statistical mumbo jumbo?", 6 July 2017
The horror overlaying the Orlando shooting, and all mass shootings, obfuscates the patterns and predictors of these violent attacks.

— leslie morgan steiner, CNN, "Why private violence is a public safety issue", 6 June 2017
But a series of top Trump aides have dodged, spun and obfuscated when asked whether the President believes climate change is happening.

— dan merica, CNN, "What does Trump believe about climate change? His aides won't say, and you can't ask him", 2 June 2017
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.

— dan goodin, Ars Technica, "WikiLeaks says CIA’s “Pandemic” turns servers into infectious Patient Zero", 1 June 2017
Yes, Trump can delay, prevaricate, obfuscate, annoy and even shut down federal science.

— jeffrey sachs, CNN, "US faces disgrace if Trump drops Paris climate pact", 31 May 2017
The Moroccan and Jordanian monarchies are flaunting their nondemocratic model after decades of obfuscating it behind the veil of reform.

— sean yom, Washington Post, "Why Jordan and Morocco are doubling down on royal rule", 16 May 2017
This trailer does a decent job of obfuscating the major plots points of the film.

— darren orf, Popular Mechanics, "'Blade Runner 2049' Seems Like a Way Cooler Dystopia Than Ours", 8 May 2017
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.

— alex shephard, New Republic, "Republicans are running interference for Trump on the Flynn-Russia scandal.", 8 May 2017

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.