Complicate vs Obscure - What's the difference?
complicate | obscure |
To fold or twist together; to combine intricately; to make complex; to combine or associate so as to make intricate or difficult.
to expose involvement in a convoluted matter.
(obsolete) Intertwined.
Complex, complicated.
* 1745 , Edward Young, Night-Thoughts , I:
Dark, faint or indistinct.
* (Dante Alighieri), , 1, 1-2
* Bible, Proverbs xx. 20
Hidden, out of sight or inconspicuous.
* (William Shakespeare)
* Sir J. Davies
Difficult to understand.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (label) 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.
* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
* (William Wake) (1657-1737)
*{{quote-book, year=1959, author=(Georgette Heyer), title=(The Unknown Ajax), chapter=1
, passage=But Richmond
(label) To hide, put out of sight etc.
* (Bill Watterson), Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat , page 62
To conceal oneself; to hide.
* (Beaumont and Fletcher) (1603-1625)
In transitive terms the difference between complicate and obscure
is that complicate is to expose involvement in a convoluted matter while obscure is to hide, put out of sight etc.complicate
English
Verb
(complicat)- Don't complicate yourself in issues that are beyond the scope of your education.
- John has been complicated in the affair by new tapes that surfaced.
- The DA has made every effort to complicate me in the scandal.
Synonyms
* (expose involvement in a convoluted matter) intricate, entangle, embroil, mix up (in something), mireSee also
* complexAdjective
(en adjective)- How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, / How complicate , how wonderful, is Man!
External links
* * ----obscure
English
Adjective
(en-adj)- I found myself in an obscure wood.
- His lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.
- The obscure bird / Clamoured the livelong night.
- the obscure corners of the earth
The machine of a new soul, passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure .}}
Usage notes
* The comparative obscurer and superlative obscurest, though formed by valid rules for English, are less common than more obscure' and ' most obscure .Synonyms
* enigmatic * mysterious * esotericAntonyms
* clearDerived terms
* obscurable * unobscurableVerb
(obscur)- They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne's oak, with obscured lights.
- There is scarce any duty which has been so obscured by the writings of learned men as this.
- I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity.
- How! There's bad news. / I must obscure , and hear it.