obfuscate
obfuscate Lexical Profile
obfuscate Game Scores & Validity
• verb
To render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible, especially intentionally to conceal the truth or evade an issue.
"Critics argued that the complex legal jargon was used to obfuscate the true financial risks of the contract."
To make computer source code or machine-readable data deliberately difficult for humans to understand while preserving its functional behavior (in computing).
"Before releasing the commercial software, the developers chose to obfuscate the source code to prevent reverse engineering."
To bewilder, confuse, or stupefy someone's mind or perception.
"The sudden barrage of contradictory statistics served only to obfuscate the panel of reviewers."
• adjective
Darkened, obscured, or rendered unclear and difficult to understand (now rare or archaic).
"The scholar struggled to interpret the obfuscate passages of the ancient manuscript."
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed in the 16th century from Late Latin obfuscatus, the past participle of obfuscare ('to darken'), formed from ob- ('over') and fuscare ('to make dark'), from fuscus ('dark, tawny').