Word.ws English Dictionary

obscured

obscured is the simple past and past participle of obscure.

Meaning of obscure

Verb

obscure (third-person singular simple present obscures, present participle obscuring, simple past and past participle obscured)

  1. (transitive) To render obscure; to darken; to make dim; to keep in the dark; to hide; to make less visible, intelligible, legible, glorious, beautiful, or illustrious.
    • They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne's oak, with obscured lights.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. (transitive) To hide, put out of sight etc.
    • It has been little altered over the years save for the addition of a platform awning which rather obscures the arcaded entrance to the booking hall.1957 August, H. P. White, “The Tonbridge-Hastings Line and its Traffic”, in Railway Magazine, page 529
  3. (intransitive, obsolete) To conceal oneself; to hide.
    • How! There's bad news. / I must obscure, and hear it.1623 (first performance), John Fletcher, William Rowley, “The Maid in the Mill”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647...
    Antonyms:
    appear, show up

See all 8 meanings of obscure

Adjective

obscured (comparative more obscured, superlative most obscured)

  1. Made hidden, less visible, or dark.

Forms of obscured

comparativemore obscured
superlativemost obscured

Words formed from obscured

Questions about obscured

What does obscured mean?
Obscured means made hidden, less visible, or dark.
What is obscured the simple past and past participle of?
Obscured is the simple past and past participle of obscure.
What part of speech is obscured?
Obscured is an adjective.

Words near obscured in the dictionary

  1. obscurationism
  2. obscurations
  3. obscurative
  4. obscure
  5. obscure honeyeater
  6. obscured
  7. obscuredly
  8. obscurely
  9. obscurement
  10. obscurements
  11. obscureness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: obscured (page history and authors); obscure (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-obscured.ogg.

Cite this entry: “obscured.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/obscured. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.