What's the difference between faint and obscure?

Faint


Definition:

  • (superl.) Lacking strength; weak; languid; inclined to swoon; as, faint with fatigue, hunger, or thirst.
  • (superl.) Wanting in courage, spirit, or energy; timorous; cowardly; dejected; depressed; as, "Faint heart ne'er won fair lady."
  • (superl.) Lacking distinctness; hardly perceptible; striking the senses feebly; not bright, or loud, or sharp, or forcible; weak; as, a faint color, or sound.
  • (superl.) Performed, done, or acted, in a weak or feeble manner; not exhibiting vigor, strength, or energy; slight; as, faint efforts; faint resistance.
  • (n.) The act of fainting, or the state of one who has fainted; a swoon. [R.] See Fainting, n.
  • (v. i.) To become weak or wanting in vigor; to grow feeble; to lose strength and color, and the control of the bodily or mental functions; to swoon; -- sometimes with away. See Fainting, n.
  • (n.) To sink into dejection; to lose courage or spirit; to become depressed or despondent.
  • (n.) To decay; to disappear; to vanish.
  • (v. t.) To cause to faint or become dispirited; to depress; to weaken.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Sleep was defined behaviorally as failure to respond to the faint auditory RT cue.
  • (2) On the other hand, immunofluorescence in anterior pituitary cells was faint and detected in only 2 of 28 patients with Graves' disease (7.1%) after absorption of their sera with rat liver aceton powder.
  • (3) Implications of these findings for fear and fainting acquisition and its relation to avoidance were discussed.
  • (4) Atlético Madrid maintained their faint hopes of catching Barcelona by recording a fourth straight league win, comfortably beating Deportivo la Coruña 3-0 with goals by the midfielder Saúl Ñíguez, top scorer Antoine Griezmann and Argentinian forward Ángel Correa.
  • (5) One subject reported slight transient faintness and visual blurring after 20 mg of the drug.
  • (6) I watched some boxing last night," he replies in his faint, lisping voice.
  • (7) Supporting a Sunderland side who had last won a home Premier League game back in January, when Stoke City were narrowly defeated, is not a pursuit for the faint-hearted but this was turning into the equivalent of the sudden dawning of a gloriously hot sunny day amid a miserable, cold, wet summer.
  • (8) Positive specimens produce a faint pink deposit which is better visualised by silver enhancement which gives an intense black colour.
  • (9) The pI 5.0 component, designated F-5.0, was faint yellow, with a broad absorption in the range of 400-450 nm, while the pI 7.5 component, designated F-7.5, was colorless and did not absorb in that range.
  • (10) There is the sound of engines hissing and crackling, which have been mixed to seem as near to the ear as the camera was to the cars; there is a mostly unnoticeable rustle of leaves in the trees; periodically, so faintly that almost no one would register it consciously, there is the sound of a car rolling through an intersection a block or two over, off camera; a dog barks somewhere far away.
  • (11) Among the observed side effects were moderate pelvic cramps (20.9%), nausea (27%), fainting (4.8%); 61.3% of the women complained of fatigue.
  • (12) The study has revealed a faintly pronounced inverse correlation between the degree of avidity of serum antibodies and the level of infectious antigenemia.
  • (13) The intravenous injection of 5-HT relieves established migraine headache, but causes side-effects of nausea, faintness, paraesthesia and dyspnoea.
  • (14) Uptake in the other benign lesions such as trauma of the ribs, spondylosis deformans, and arthrosis deformans was rather faint.
  • (15) Consistent with these measures, derived from self-reported data, physician-diagnosed measures also indicate a greater vulnerability of unemployed individuals to serious physical ailments such as heart trouble, pain in heart and chest, high blood pressure, spells of faint-dizziness, bone-joint problems and hypertension.
  • (16) The tec gene is expressed mainly in liver and faintly in heart, kidney and ovary.
  • (17) All lymphomas and plasmacytomas were negative with MAK-6 and CAM-5.2, however, AE1:AE3 faintly stained two of three plasmacytomas and two of the seven large cell lymphomas.
  • (18) In the arterial blood, ESR signal of HbNO with faint hyperfine structure was detected.
  • (19) He is also characterised as "the devoted husband of a bestselling novelist with a few of her own ideas about how fiction works"; a funny sentence construction that carries a faint whiff of husband stoically bent over his books as wife keeps popping up with pesky theories about realism.
  • (20) Total RNP contained more small subunit proteins than 110S RNP; 7 proteins spots were distinct, 10 protein spots were faint and 8 protein spots were missing.

Obscure


Definition:

  • (superl.) Covered over, shaded, or darkened; destitute of light; imperfectly illuminated; dusky; dim.
  • (superl.) Of or pertaining to darkness or night; inconspicuous to the sight; indistinctly seen; hidden; retired; remote from observation; unnoticed.
  • (superl.) Not noticeable; humble; mean.
  • (superl.) Not easily understood; not clear or legible; abstruse or blind; as, an obscure passage or inscription.
  • (superl.) Not clear, full, or distinct; clouded; imperfect; as, an obscure view of remote objects.
  • (a.) To render obscure; to darken; to make dim; to keep in the dark; to hide; to make less visible, intelligible, legible, glorious, beautiful, or illustrious.
  • (v. i.) To conceal one's self; to hide; to keep dark.
  • (n.) Obscurity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This diagnosis was obscured by the absence of cutaneous, oropharyngeal, and respiratory involvement.
  • (2) The mechanism of ACTH action on brain catecholamine metabolism is still obscure, however, an increased release of the NA to ACTH peptides is very likely in the light of the present observations.
  • (3) However, peptide bonds between 193 and 194, and 194 and 195 were cleaved in the presence of mAb 1C3 as easily as in the presence of mAb 31A4, suggesting that the region of residues 200 to 202 was obscured by, or within the antibody binding site, but that the region of residues 193 to 195 was not.
  • (4) The physician's approach to the differential diagnosis of obscure, atypical pneumonias has changed.
  • (5) The thigh and hip manifestations can obscure the primary intra-abdominal process either due to the obvious emphysema or to the obtunded abdominal signs secondary to associated neuropathy.
  • (6) While tonic pupil and reduced sweating can be attributed to the affection of postganglionic cholinergic parasympathetic and sympathetic fibres projecting to the iris and sweat glands, respectively, the pathogenesis of diminished or lost tendon jerks remains obscure.
  • (7) It is found that generic averages obscure some rather substantial differences at the species level for both Cercopithecus and Cercocebus.
  • (8) Although the pathophysiology of the pancreatic injury is obscure, the lack of other etiological factors and temporal association of the pancreatitis with acetaminophen-induced hepatic and renal toxicity suggest a causal relationship.
  • (9) Because reticulocytes contain a pool of uncombined alpha chains which might have obscured the demonstration of an alpha chain-dependent mechanism for beta-chain synthesis, subsequent studies were done with bone marrow cells.
  • (10) However, the mechanism by which Ag II is able to modulate anterior pituitary secretion still remains obscure.
  • (11) Other causes were 20 (13%) with cerebrovascular diseases, 30 (20%) hepatic failure and 11 (8%) were of miscellaneous and obscure causes.
  • (12) In such a case with a large hematoma, the presence of a tumor may be obscured on CT scan and angiography.
  • (13) However, the difficulty still remains that the latter may be obscured by differences not related to thermostability etc.
  • (14) The activating mechanism of the condition still remains obscure.
  • (15) Its language is “archaic and obscure”, the commission says.
  • (16) Clofibrate, an antilipidemic drug that acts by a still obscure mechanism, is known to specifically increase up to 30-fold the activity of the hepatic cytochrome P-450 isozyme that omega-hydroxlates lauric acid.
  • (17) On the electron microscopy, the sarcomere was shortened and Z-line was partly obscure.
  • (18) Photographs of 82 boys from the Harpenden Growth Study were measured at ages 5 to 18 years, in an order that obscured which photographs were of the same boy at different ages.
  • (19) Although the K+ concentration of the contents of the GI tract as well as the K+ transport by the portal vein were increased, the source of the excess K+ remains obscure.
  • (20) The effects of long-term exposure of humans to formaldehyde, however, are more obscure.