obfuscate
verb
Mary Carroll
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Try to Understand the Roots of Obfuscate
“Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again.” So begins the classic 1960s Simon and Garfunkel song “The Sound of Silence,” which was written by Paul Simon with a seemingly oxymoronic title that has obfuscated—that is, confused—ten thousand people, maybe more (probably a lot more) in the decades since. It confuses us too, but we’re not above being oxymoronic ourselves when we say that darkness, our old friend, shines a helpful light on the meaning of the word obfuscate. When obfuscate first came into use in the early 16th century, it was with the meaning “to throw into shadow.” This makes sense, since the word comes from the Latin obfuscāre (“to obscure or darken”) which itself comes in part from fuscus (“dark-colored”). The word was used for both figurative and literal darkening before developing the even more figurative senses of “to make more difficult to understand,” “to be evasive or unclear,” and “to confuse,” which in modern use are now more common.
Examples of obfuscate in a Sentence
Christine Winter, Artforum, 1 Mar. 2025
Asked to provide examples of municipalities that have done such a thing, city officials obfuscated and waffled.
—The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 3 Feb. 2025
Putin has been obfuscating how weak the Russian economy is by hiding and fudging the numbers.
—Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, TIME, 23 Jan. 2025
While the deluge of lawsuits challenging Mr. Musk’s authority has at times provided some clarity, many of the filings appear to obfuscate basic details about the larger goals at play and the people responsible for carrying them out.
—Zach Montague, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Obfuscate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obfuscate. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.
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