這一篇文章昂立外語【新概念培訓】給大家講新概念英語詞匯obscure。曾出現于新概念三的Lesson 36 A chance in a million：
Readers happily accepted the fact that an obscure maidservant was really the hero's mother.
在這里的obscure意思是無名的、不起眼的。托馬斯就有本書叫做Jude the Obscure（《無名的裘德》）。
讓我們來看看The Captives by Hugh Walpole中的一段話：
The dress was very fine--simple of course and quite plain, but elegant as no dress of Maggie's had ever been elegant. ……She had a moment of acute disgust with herself so that she could have torn the dress from her and rushed into her old obscure and dingy black again.
由此可見Maggie原來的裝束是樸實無華，非常不起眼的。而與她收到的裙子形成強烈對比。
obscure作為形容詞，最基本的含義是模糊的，幽暗的。
如：
He set the bed in an obscure corner.
他把床放在一個昏暗的角落。
這里的obscure就等于dim。又如：
What should she do then? Whither should she go? She flung up her head and looked bravely into the face of Ellen, the cook, who came to remove the breakfast, but she had to bite her lip to keep back the tears that WOULD come and fill her eyes so that the world was misty and obscure. (The Captives by Hugh Walpole)
眼淚模糊了視線，不正是這句話的最恰當翻譯嗎？
但是obscure和dim以及相近意思的vague有所區別。雖然他們都有缺少亮光的昏暗模糊之意。dim指光線不足或視力較差，不能清晰地看見物體。vague通常作借喻用，形容抽象事物。obscure指因光線不充足而使物體灰暗不清，失去光澤或若隱若現。作借喻時指因復雜、深奧或含糊而難于理解：
The reasons why he did it are obscure.
他做那事的理由還不清楚。
obscurely是obscure的副詞形式，基本含義也是難以理解地。比如：
They were making her feel obscurely worried
這句話等于She is worried for reasons that were difficult to understand.
obscure當然不止形容詞一個詞性，它還可以做動詞。猜猜看作動詞是什么含義呢？對了，就是使…變模糊的含義。如：
The moon was obscured by clouds.
月亮被云遮住了。
又可再引申為抽象的“遮蔽”：
Recent successes have obscured the fact that the company is still in trouble.
近來的成功掩蓋了公司仍舊處于困境中的事實。
經過我們的講解，obscure這一詞是不是變得不再obscure了呢？
