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Glite Dictionary
🙈 To hide or confuse 🌍 Not well-known ❓ Hard to understand 👀 Not easily seen 🔤 To weaken sound
to obscure

to obscure

2 9.2
Make a vowel sound weaker and more neutral in weak syllables
  • verb
  • /əbˈskjʊr/
  • Specialized
translation icon : reducir
  • She noticed that the unstressed vowels in the song were obscured to sound like schwas.
  • become obscured

Examples

  • When pronounced quickly, the vowels in 'banana' tend to be obscured in informal speech.

  • The syllables "her" and "hand" here are prominent in quite different ways; to label both "stressed" obscures the subtlety of the rhythmical effect.

    Academic text (2001)

  • Although simplification, idealization, and reduction are inevitable in any process of theory formation and especially in formalization, the use of logical models may not obscure relevant linguistic facts.

    Academic text (2006)

  • In unstressed syllables, vowels often become obscured into a neutral sound.

How Reduced

to obscure
  • Specialized
2 9.2
to weaken
305 2.8
to articulate
45 4.4

Surface Forms

obscure infinitive
obscured past
obscured past participle
obscuring present participle
obscures third person singular

Etymology

Obscure comes from the Latin word obscurus, which means 'dark' or 'hidden', and a helpful way to remember the linguistic sense is to think of a sound being 'darkened' or hidden so it becomes the weak 'uh' sound in fast speech. That's why linguists say a vowel is 'obscured' when it becomes less clear or neutral.