Word.ws English Dictionary

vaguen

Syllables: va·guen/ˈveɪɡən/

vaguen verb: to make (something) vague or more vague; to blur, to obscure.

Verb

vaguen (third-person singular simple present vaguens, present participle vaguening, simple past and past participle vaguened)

  1. (informal, transitive) To make (something) vague or more vague; to blur, to obscure.
    • [Rosemary] Pountney sees the term ‘vaguen’ in the play’s second typescript as ‘explicit testimony to [Samuel] Beckett’s policy of “vaguening” the later drafts of his plays’ (1988: 149).1988, Rosemary Pountney, Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956–76: From All that Fall to Footfalls with Commentaries on the Latest Plays (Irish Literary Studies; 28), Gerrards Cross...
    • Mud causes most critics to invoke Beckett, and like that master Fornes [i.e., María Irene Fornés] "vaguens" the setting of her elemental characters.1999, Maria M. Delgado, Caridad Svich, editors, Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes (Art of Theater Series), Lyme, N.H.: Smith and Kraus, →ISBN, page 12
  2. (informal, intransitive) To become (more) vague; to blur.
    • As both artists [Samuel Beckett and Joseph Mallord William Turner] developed, their imagery vaguened. The result is imagery hazened, a studied, a crafted indistinction. Beckett thus situates himself (and his art) in the midst of such a late-modernist or early postmodernist ethos, exploring the...2004 January, S[tanley] E. Gontarski, “An Art of Incompletion: A Preface”, in Journal of Beckett Studies, volume 14, numbers 1–2, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6
    • In an example of the kind of wavering syntax that characterizes all the ill-said language to follow, vagueness penetrates the finest grain of Beckett's language here [in Ill Seen Ill Said (1982)]. […] "Say one furlong. On an average" blends the meanings of "say" as "let us suppose"—a tentative...2015 winter, Graham Fraser, “‘Haze Sole Certitude’: Beckett’s Late Vaguenings”, in Journal of Modern Literature, volume 38, number 2, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC...

Examples of vaguen in a sentence

  • This increasing ambiguity fits in with Beckett's strategy to ‘vaguen’ his text, as Rosemary Pountney has demonstrated with reference to the theatre.2011, Dirk van Hulle, “The Genesis of Beckett’s Last Works”, in The Making of Samuel Beckett’s Stirrings Still/Soubresauts and Comment...
  • The strategies that Beckett employed in his writing, his vaguening of time and place for instance, have helped foster this popular way of seeing that work.2018, Trish McTighe, “‘Be Again, Be Again’: The Gate’s Beckett Country”, in David Clare, Des Lally, Patrick Lonergan, editors, The Gate...
  • As both artists [Samuel Beckett and Joseph Mallord William Turner] developed, their imagery vaguened.2004 January, S[tanley] E. Gontarski, “An Art of Incompletion: A Preface”, in Journal of Beckett Studies, volume 14, numbers 1–2...
  • On an average" blends the meanings of "say" as "let us suppose"—a tentative hypothesis—and "say" as "approximately"—a gesture of rough measurement that is promptly vaguened to "an average".2015 winter, Graham Fraser, “‘Haze Sole Certitude’: Beckett’s Late Vaguenings”, in Journal of Modern Literature, volume 38, number 2...

Forms of vaguen

third-person singular presentvaguens
present participlevaguening
past participlevaguened
pastvaguened

Origin of vaguen

From vague + -en (suffix forming transitive verbs from adjectives, meaning ‘to make [adjective]’), coined by Irish writer Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), apparently first in a manuscript note to himself on an initial typescript of his play Happy Days (1961).

Words formed from vaguen

Words that rhyme with vaguen

Questions about vaguen

What does vaguen mean?
Vaguen means to make (something) vague or more vague; to blur, to obscure.
How do you use vaguen in a sentence?
This increasing ambiguity fits in with Beckett's strategy to ‘vaguen’ his text, as Rosemary Pountney has demonstrated with reference to the theatre.
What part of speech is vaguen?
Vaguen is a verb.
How do you pronounce vaguen?
Vaguen is pronounced /ˈveɪɡən/ (UK).
What is the past tense of vaguen?
The past tense of vaguen is vaguened.

Words near vaguen in the dictionary

  1. vaguebooking
  2. vaguebooks
  3. vagued
  4. vagueish
  5. vaguely
  6. vaguen
  7. vaguened
  8. vagueness
  9. vaguenesses
  10. vaguening
  11. vaguens

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vaguen (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-vaguen.wav.

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