Other forms: obfuscated, obfuscating, obfuscates
To obfuscate is to make something deliberately unclear. Obfuscate the issue, deliberately obfuscating, obfuscate the figures.
The deliberateness is the accusation, since anybody can be unclear by accident. In programming, obfuscated code is deliberately made unreadable to protect it, which is the one honest use of the word.
1verbobfuscateTo make something deliberately unclear.
“The company used confusing language in its contracts to obfuscate the real costs.”
obfuscate is a confusing.
Latin offuscare means to darken, from ob plus fuscus, dark.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰewh₂-
Latin
offuscātus
Old French
offusquer
Middle French
obfusquer
English, today
obfuscate
Built from
The adjective is 1487, in Middle English, the verb in 1536; either Middle French obfusquer, from Old French offusquer, or directly from Latin offuscātus, the perfect passive participle of offuscō (see -ate and -ate), from Latin ob- + fuscō (“to darken”). a doublet of dusken.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA