apparent
adjUK /əˈpæɹənt/ · US /əˈpæɹənt/
Etymology From Middle English apparaunt, aparaunt, from Old French aparent, aparant, in turn from Latin appārēns, appārentis, present participle of appāreō.
1
Capable of being seen, or easily seen; open to view; visible to the eye; within sight or view.
- […] 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.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:
- Her disappointment was apparent to everyone.
4 more examples
- The apparent cause of the fire was faulty wiring.
- make apparent
- become apparent
- for no apparent reason
2
Clear or manifest to the understanding; plain; evident; obvious; known; palpable; indubitable.
- 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.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]:
- 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.1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Westminster [London]: Archibald Constable and Company, […], →OCLC:
3
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.
- To live on terms of civility, and even of apparent friendship.1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second:
2 more examples
- 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.1911, Encyclopædia Britannica, Aberration:
- 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.2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
- Synonyms
- visible, conspicuous, distinct, plain, obvious, clear, eyely, certain, evident, manifest, indubitable, notorious, transparent, prima facie, illusory, superficial, apparent, bare, displayed, exposed, unconcealed
- Derived terms
- apparency, apparent brightness, apparent charge, apparent death, apparent horizon, apparently, apparent magnitude, apparentness, apparent temperature, apparent time, heir apparent, heiress apparent, inapparent, nonapparent, subapparent, superapparent, unapparent
- Related terms
- apparition, apparitional, apparitionist, appear, appearance
- Hypernyms
- perceptible
- Hyponyms
- conspicuous