Unclear means not easy to understand or make out. Handwriting nobody can read, an instruction that leaves out a step, a shape moving in fog.
It works from both ends: the rules are unclear, and I am unclear about the rules. Reports and news lean on one frame in particular — it is unclear whether, it is unclear how, it remains unclear why the fire started. With a person the preposition is ABOUT or ON: unclear about the deadline, unclear on the details. Do not stretch it to the other meanings of clear; an unclear window is odd English, and unclear never means dirty or blocked. The clean opposite is clear, and unclear is the softer thing to say than wrong, because it blames the fog rather than the person.
1adjectiveunclearHard to understand or to see properly.
“The instructions were unclear about which cable goes where.”
2adjectiveknownNot yet known or decided.
“It is unclear whether the shop will reopen at all.”
3adjectivecertain(of a person) Not certain about something.
“I am still unclear about what I am supposed to bring.”
Unclear is un- plus clear, and it is old — Middle English already had unclere. Its cousins took a different turn: Dutch onklaar and West Frisian unklear mean broken or out of order. What English uses for a muddy sentence, Dutch uses for a machine that will not start.
Middle English
unclere
English, today
unclear
From Middle English unclere, equivalent to un- + clear. Compare stq uunkloor (“unclear”), West Frisian ûnklear (“inoperative, broken”), Dutch onklaar (“out of order, defective, broken”), German unklar (“unclear”), Danish uklar (“unclear”), Swedish oklar (“unclear”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Everyday Adjectives, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word