Obscureness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality or condition of being difficult to understand or perceive clearly
2. A state in which something lacks clarity or is hidden from easy comprehension
3. The characteristic of something being vague, unclear, or not easily recognized

Etymology: "Obscureness" is a plain compound: the adjective "obscure" with the suffix "-ness," which turns an adjective into a noun meaning "the state or quality of being" that adjective. The adjective came into English from Latin "obscurus," meaning dark, dim or covered over, and that sense of physical darkness still sits underneath the modern meaning of being hard to make out or understand. The suffix has a longer pedigree than the adjective. "-ness" descends from Old English "-nes," and it has been attaching to native words and borrowings alike ever since, which is why English can produce nouns like this one on demand. Its ancestors reach back through Proto-Germanic to Proto-Indo-European, but the working part for the word itself is simply that "-ness" was already a productive tool in English long before "obscureness" was formed.

Synonyms: obscurity, vagueness, ambiguity

Antonyms: clarity, lucidity, explicitness