Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The quality or condition of being indistinct; confusion; uncertainty; obscurity; faintness; dimness: as, indistinctness of vision or of voice.
- noun In psychology, that character of apprehension which consists in a deficiency of consciousness of the parts of the concept or idea apprehended.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The quality or condition of being indistinct; lack of definiteness; dimness; confusion
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The property of being
indistinct .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quality of being indistinct and without sharp outlines
Etymologies
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Examples
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It is quite clear that what hinders a true understanding of anything is vagueness; and it is by this process of asking questions that vagueness is to be dispelled: for, in the first place, it removes one great vagueness, or indistinctness, which is very apt to beset the minds of many; namely, the not clearly seeing whether they understand a thing or no; and much more, the not seeing what it is that they do understand, and what it is which they do not.
The Christian Life Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps Thomas Arnold 1818
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But I don't see how at the same time we are grappling with the "indistinctness" of literature we can also comfortably accede to its "reasoning" -- after all, "the imagination has to keep fitting things together that rational thought would keep apart" -- or its "moralizing."
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I tell myself now, as a profane fact, that I did stand by that river (Methley gathered some seeds from the bushes that grew there), but since that I am away from his banks, “divine Scamander” has recovered the proper mystery belonging to him as an unseen deity; a kind of indistinctness, like that which belongs to far antiquity, has spread itself over my memory, of the winding stream that I saw with these very eyes.
Eothen, or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East Alexander William Kinglake 1850
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Scamander” has recovered the proper mystery belonging to him as an unseen deity; a kind of indistinctness, like that which belongs to far antiquity, has spread itself over my memory, of the winding stream that I saw with these very eyes.
Eothen 2003
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Her head was raised, and in the indistinctness I caught that sweet look of hers which besought me, and which I answered without knowing to what question.
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The final chapter of What Good Are the Arts? tries to make a case for literature based on the its characteristic "indistinctness."
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It has, that is, to keep ingeniously fabricating distinctness -- or whatever approximation to distinctness it decides to settle for -- out of indistinctness ....
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What they were conjuring up he didn't know, but so far it was enormously impressive even in its indistinctness.
The Lives of Felix Gunderson Sugu Althomsons 2010
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Yet the murkiness of public discourse often results not from willful indistinctness but simply from a blithe, untutored lack of rhetorical know-how.
The Syntax of Style Henry Hitchings 2010
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Literature can't both produce an indistinctness that every reader makes distinct in his/her own way (or leaves it indistinct) and make moral and rational claims that are presumably universal in their appeal.
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