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Webster 1913 Edition


Obvious

Ob′vi-ous

,
Adj.
[L.
obvius
;
ob
(see
Ob-
) +
via
way. See
Voyage
.]
1.
Opposing; fronting.
[Obs.]
To the evil turn
My
obvious
breast.
Milton.
2.
Exposed; subject; open; liable.
[Obs.]
Obvious to dispute.”
Milton.
3.
Easily discovered, seen, or understood; readily perceived by the eye or the intellect; plain; evident; apparent;
as, an
obvious
meaning; an
obvious
remark.
Apart and easy to be known they lie,
Amidst the heap, and
obvious
to the eye.
Pope.
Syn. – Plain; clear; evident. See
Manifest
.
Ob′vi-ous-ly
,
adv.
Ob′vi-ous-ness
,
Noun.

Webster 1828 Edition


Obvious

OB'VIOUS

,
Adj.
[L. obvus. See the Verb.]
1.
Meeting; opposed in front.
I to the evil turn my obvious breast. [Not now used.]
2.
Open; exposed. [Little used.]
3.
Plain; evident; easily discovered, seen or understood; readily perceived by the eye or the intellect. We say, a phenomenon obvious to the sight, or a truth obvious to the mind.

Definition 2024


obvious

obvious

English

"Water is wet" is an obvious statement.

Adjective

obvious (comparative more obvious, superlative most obvious)

  1. Easily discovered, seen, or understood; self-explanatory.
    • 1915, Emerson Hough, The Purchase Price, chapterII:
      Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.
    • 2013 August 17, Down towns”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8849:
      It is not obvious, to economists anyway, that cities should exist at all. Crowds of people mean congestion and costly land and labour. But there are also well-known advantages to bunching up. When transport costs are sufficiently high a firm can spend more money shipping goods to clusters of consumers than it saves on cheap land and labour.

Synonyms

  • See also Wikisaurus:obvious.

Antonyms

Derived terms

Translations

See also

External links

  • obvious in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
  • obvious in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911