obfuscation

British  

/ ˌɒbfʌsˈkeɪʃən /

noun

1. the act or an instance of making something obscure, dark, or difficult to understand

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Explanation

The act of obscuring something to make it more difficult to understand is called obfuscation. Lawyers are sometimes accused of obfuscation, since legal contracts can be so difficult to understand. The word obfuscation is from the verb obfuscate, which itself comes from the Latin word obfuscare, meaning "to darken." The confusion that results when something is muddled or obfuscated is also called obfuscation. If you intentionally make something more complex or more difficult to see or understand, then you are guilty of obfuscation.

Example Sentences

There are a few more hoops to jump through when using NordVPN because they have subsets of servers dedicated to P2P and obfuscation.

From Salon • Mar. 27, 2026

"They did so through a tangled web of lies, obfuscation, and concealment."

From Barron's • Mar. 20, 2026

Liaw and his affiliates engaged in “a tangled web of lies, obfuscation and concealment — all to drive sales and generate revenues in violation of U.S. law,” federal prosecutors said in a press release.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 19, 2026

“It’s all pretext and obfuscation when the real agenda is rejecting conventional science and serving a predetermined anti-vaccine agenda,” Richard Hughes IV, a law professor at George Washington University, told The Guardian.

From Salon • Feb. 13, 2026

Thyon, thirteen years old and sharp as the point of a viper’s fang, had looked around him at the cryptic rituals and philosophies and seen it all as obfuscation cooked up to excuse that failure.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor