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 toelectromagnetic radiation such aslight .
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
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Their opacity was a contributor to the financial crisis because it was very hard to figure out the counterparty risks in the system.
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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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