Adjective

(en adjective)

Apparent, evident; meant for open display.

* 1956–1960 , (second edition, 1960), chapter ii: “Motives and Motivation”, page 32:

Motives, of course, may be mixed; but this only means that a man aims at a variety of goals by means of the same course of action. Similarly a man may have a strong motive or a weak one, an ulterior motive or an ostensible one.

* '>citation

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 relationships.

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.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Easily discovered, seen, or understood; self-explanatory.

*

*:Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-17, volume=408, issue=8849, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Down towns , passage=It is not obvious , to economists anyway, that cities should exist at all. Crowds of people mean congestion and costly land and labour. But there are also well-known advantages to bunching up. When transport costs are sufficiently high a firm can spend more money shipping goods to clusters of consumers than it saves on cheap land and labour.}}