Words That Often Obfuscate

By Judy Vorfeld

What do I mean by words that obfus­cate? In fact, what does “obfus­cate” mean? It’s a word that rarely finds a home in a nor­mal busi­ness letter.

Let’s ana­lyze just a few words that don’t belong in most busi­ness doc­u­ments or on many web­sites (it all depends on the audience).

I’ll also offer bet­ter (I hope!) choices for every­day usage.

OBFUSCATE: AHB-fuh-SKET
Means: to make some­thing unclear, dif­fi­cult to under­stand.
Try: con­fuse, alter, change, and modify.

E·GRE·GIOUS: ee-GREE-juss
Means: Outrageously bad. Ridiculous to an extra­or­di­nary degree.
Try: fla­grant, bla­tant, absurd, bizarre, grotesque, gross, and glaring.

OB·SE·QUI·OUS: ahb-SEE-kwee-us
Means: too eager to please or obey
Try: Also flat­ter­ing, toad­y­ing, sub­mis­sive, fawn­ing, grov­el­ing, unc­tu­ous, smarmy.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Avoid using osten­ta­tious words that obfus­cate their unem­bell­ished sig­nif­i­cance. Also, avoid being either egre­gious or obse­quious, and you will do satisfactorily.

AVOID USING BIG WORDS!