indistinct
/ɪndɪˈstɪŋkt
/adjective
Not clear or sharply defined: his speech was slurred and indistinct...
- How vague and indistinct and undefined the ideas of most men are upon the subject!
- First we see a blur on a snowy landscape, followed by an indistinct grey shadow hovering beyond the window of the child's bedroom.
- By night, strange, murky, shady, characters emerge from the indistinct, nebulous corners.
Synonyms
blurred, out of focus, fuzzy, hazy, misty, foggy, cloudy, shadowy, smoky, dim, nebulous;
unclear, obscure, vague, faint, indefinite, indistinguishable, barely perceptible, undefined, lacking definition, hard to see, hard to make out
archaic blear
rare obfuscated, nebulose
indecipherable, illegible, barely legible, unreadable, unintelligible, unfathomable, hard to read, hard to make out;
undefined, ill-defined, lacking definition, formless, indeterminate;
pale, faded, smudged
informal as clear as mud
muffled, muted, dull, low, quiet, soft, faint, weak, feeble, inaudible, scarcely audible, scarcely perceptible, hard to hear, hard to make out;
muttered, mumbled, stifled, strangled, smothered, suppressed
Derivatives
indistinctly
/ adverb ...- Throughout this piece bear in mind that my interlocutor mumbled indistinctly, and therefore I had to ask him to repeat everything.
- ‘Neurotic behaviors were conceived as continuous with normal behaviors, the two blurring indistinctly into each other,’ he writes.
- Sometimes she speaks indistinctly and we put the words together ourselves; sometimes we can't make out what she's saying or the words don't make sense.
indistinctness
/ noun ...- With the world moving faster than internet shares on a trading screen, the danger of slipping into the void of indistinctness is greater than ever.
- There is without doubt a certain indistinctness to Vermeer's handling of paint in many passages, and a frequent blurring of the boundaries between areas of colour.
- There were better prints, from a technical point of view, in the show, but the hazy indistinctness of this one seemed to literalize its distance from us in time.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Latin indistinctus, from in- 'not' + distinctus 'separated, distinguished' (see distinct).