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OneKitly

unclear

adjectiveverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ʌnˈklɪə(ɹ)//
  • United States//ʌnˈklɪɚ//

Ambiguous; liable to more than one interpretation.

adjective

  1. 1

    Ambiguous; liable to more than one interpretation.

    The remark she made comparing her life with that of a fish was unclear.

  2. 2

    Not clearly or explicitly defined.

  3. 3

    Not easy to see or read; indecipherable or unreadable.

    From such a long distance away, the name on the signpost was unclear.

  4. 4

    Not having a clear idea; uncertain.

    I'm still unclear about what she meant by that remark.

Etymology

From Middle English unclere, equivalent to un- + clear. Compare Saterland Frisian uunkloor (“unclear”), West Frisian ûnklear (“inoperative, broken”), Dutch onklaar (“out of order, defective, broken”), German unklar (“unclear”), Danish uklar (“unclear”), Swedish oklar (“unclear”).

verb

  1. 1

    rareTo undo the process of clearing.

    Clearing, unclearing and deleting activities

    […] finally [the block] would be cleared and remain that way until moved. Although this clearing and unclearing can occur repeatedly, the current BAGGER algorithm is unable to generalize number within unwindable subproofs.

Forms

comparative
unclearer, more unclear
superlative
unclearest, most unclear
past tense
uncleared
past participle
uncleared
present participle
unclearing
third person singular
unclears
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).