Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or state of being opaque.
  • noun Something opaque.
  • noun Obscurity; impenetrability.
  • noun Dullness of mind.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being opaque; opaqueness; the quality of a body which renders it impervious to the rays of light; want of transparency.
  • noun That which is opaque; an opaque body or object; an opaque part or spot.
  • noun Darkness; obscurity.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state of being opaque; the quality of a body which renders it impervious to the rays of light; want of transparency; opaqueness.
  • noun Obscurity; want of clearness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable The state or quality of being opaque, not allowing light to pass through
  • noun uncountable The state or quality of being inaccessible to understanding
  • noun optics, countable A measure of relative impenetrability to electromagnetic radiation such as light.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the phenomenon of not permitting the passage of electromagnetic radiation
  • noun the quality of being opaque to a degree; the degree to which something reduces the passage of light
  • noun incomprehensibility resulting from obscurity of meaning

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French opacité, from Old French, from Latin opācitās, from opācus, dark.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French opacité.

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Examples

  • Our President believes in opacity, works in secret, tells us nothing, and when we see the photo ops, its only corporate and banking power sitting with him at the table.

    Matthew Yglesias » Transparent Negotiations 2010

  • But as its opacity is a double edged sword, it is also much more susceptible to rent seeking as is evidenced in the form of the proposed Waxmen-Markey bill whereby 85% of the emissions permits would be allocated as opposed to auctioned off.

    Archive 2009-05-01 Ilya 2009

  • But as its opacity is a double edged sword, it is also much more susceptible to rent seeking as is evidenced in the form of the proposed Waxmen-Markey bill whereby 85% of the emissions permits would be allocated as opposed to auctioned off.

    Cap and Trade= Carbon Tax + Corporate Welfare part 1 million and five xtra 2009

  • That slight opacity translates into more visual impact for visitors once they step inside.

    Gehry Leaves the Risks to the Kids Julie V. Iovine 2011

  • BUT to compare Windows and Linux and make a statement like the above about opacity is ignorant at best misleading and deceitful at worse.

    Why Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com 2008

  • The play of light and opacity is analogous to the relation of gaze and screen: "It is always that gleam of light — it lay at the heart of my little story — it is always this which prevents me, at each point, from being a screen, from making the light appear as an iridescence that overflows it" (96).

    The Ordinary Sky: Wordsworth, Blanchot, and the Writing of Disaster 2008

  • Meridor said he exchanged a friendly greeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel's policy of "opacity" -- refusing to confirm or deny reports that it has up to 200 nuclear warheads.

    JTA - Recent News rkampeas@jta.org 2010

  • In particular, I think that the morphological opacity is quite natural (compare Steven Pinker’s example of claiming a baseball hitter “flied out” instead of “flew out”), with only minimal help from your “differentiation” point.

    Short Sale Your House! (Don’t short sell it.) « Motivated Grammar 2010

  • Their opacity was a contributor to the financial crisis because it was very hard to figure out the counterparty risks in the system.

    The Race To Finish Financial Reform 2010

  • Their opacity was a contributor to the financial crisis because it was very hard to figure out the counterparty risks in the system.

    Forbes.com: News 2010

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