the.com/obscureness
The quality of being so unclear that even this word prefers 'obscurity' instead.
means The state of being unclear, hidden, or hard to understand — identical in meaning to 'obscurity,' just the clunkier sibling nobody invites to the party.
from Built straightforwardly from 'obscure' plus the native English suffix '-ness.' 'Obscure' itself traces back through French to Latin 'obscurus,' meaning dark or dim, likely related to a root about covering or hiding. English actually had two paths to the same meaning: the Latin-rooted '-ity' ending gave us 'obscurity,' while the homegrown '-ness' gave us 'obscureness.' Both are legitimate and centuries old, but 'obscurity' won the popularity contest, leaving 'obscureness' to linger in dictionaries, rarely chosen, which is a fittingly ironic fate for a word about being overlooked.
- redundant twin
- Obscurity means the same thing and gets used instead
- word rarity
- Rarely appears in print compared to obscurity
- irony level
- A word about unclearness that sounds unclear itself