Word of the Day:
ostensible
What It Means
Apparent, evident; meant for open display.
Appearing as such; being such in appearance; professed, supposed (rather than demonstrably true or real).
The ostensible reason for his visit to New York was to see his mother, but the real reason was to get to the Yankees game the next day.
Ostensible in Context
“In witch-trials the conflict was officially defined as between the accused and God, or between the accused and the Catholic (later Protestant) church, as God's earthly representative. […] Behind the ostensible conflict of the witch-trial lay the usual conflicts of social class, values, and human...”
Did You Know?
Borrowed from French ostensible, formed with the suffix -ible, from Latin ostensus, the past participle of ostendō (“show”), itself from obs- (“in front of”) (akin to ob- (“in the way”)) + tendō (“stretch”) (akin to Ancient Greek τείνω (teínō)). Cf. ostentatious.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ostensible (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “ostensible.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ostensible. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
