obscuration
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Latin obscūrātiō.[1] By surface analysis, obscure + -ation.
Noun
[edit]obscuration (countable and uncountable, plural obscurations)
- The state of being obscured.
- 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, chapter X, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern Worker):
- Money is miraculous. What miraculous facilities has it yielded, will it yield us; but also what never-imagined confusions, obscurations has it brought in; down almost to total extinction of the moral-sense in large masses of mankind!
- 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC:
- At eleven the room darkened, the moon having climbed behind a tree. But the tree being small, and the moon's ascension rapid, this transit was brief, and this obscuration.
- A unit of measurement used in particular for smoke detectors which respond to absorption of light by smoke, in percent absorption per unit length, e.g. % obs/ft, % obs/m.
Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]the act or state of being obscured
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References
[edit]- ^ “obscuration, n.”, in OED Online
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
