Wiktionary

apparent

English

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Middle French apparent, Old French aparent, aparant, in turn from Latin appārēns, appārentis, present participle of appāreō.

Pronunciation

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  • (UK) IPA(key): /əˈpæɹ.ənt/
  • (US) IPA(key): /əˈpæɹ.ənt/, /əˈpɛɹ.ənt/
    • Audio (US):(file)

Adjective

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apparent (comparative more apparent, superlative most apparent)

  1. Capable of being seen, or easily seen; open to view; visible to the eye; within sight or view.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
      […] Hesperus, that led / The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, / Rising in clouded majesty, at length / Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light, / And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.
  2. Clear or manifest to the understanding; plain; evident; obvious; known; palpable; indubitable.
    • c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:
      Salisbury: It is apparent foul-play; and ’tis shame / That greatness should so grossly offer it: / So thrive it in your game! and so, farewell.
    • 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 20, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:
      When I came to Renfield's room I found him lying on the floor on his left side in a glittering pool of blood. When I went to move him, it became at once apparent that he had received some terrible injuries.
  4. Appearing to the eye or mind (distinguished from, but not necessarily opposed to, true or real); seeming.
    • 1785, Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay II (“Of the Powers we have by means of our External Senses”), Chapter XIX (“Of Matter and of Space”),
      What George Berkeley calls visible magnitude was by astronomers called apparent magnitude.
    • 1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second:
      To live on terms of civility, and even of apparent friendship.
    • 1911, Encyclopædia Britannica, Aberration:
      This apparent motion is due to the finite velocity of light, and the progressive motion of the observer with the earth, as it performs its yearly course about the sun.
    • 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
      Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.

Usage notes

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  • The word apparent has two common uses that are almost in opposition. One means roughly “clear; clearly true”, and serves to make a statement more decisive:
    It was apparent that no one knew the answer. (=No one knew the answer, and it showed.)
  • The other is roughly “seeming; to all appearances”, and serves to make a statement less decisive:
    The apparent source of the hubbub was a stray kitten. (=There was a stray kitten, and it seemed to be the source of the hubbub.)
  • The same ambivalence occurs with the derived adverb apparently, which usually means “seemingly” but can also mean “clearly”, especially when it is modified by another adverb, such as quite.

Synonyms

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Antonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

References

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Anagrams

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French

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Etymology

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Inherited from Old French aparent, aparant, borrowed from Latin appārentem.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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apparent (feminine apparente, masculine plural apparents, feminine plural apparentes)

  1. apparent (all senses)

Derived terms

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Further reading

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Latin

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Verb

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apparent

  1. third-person plural present active subjunctive of apparō

Verb

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appārent

  1. third-person plural present active indicative of appāreō
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