Obvious

Pronunciation

• GenAm IPA: /ˈɑb.viː.É™s/
• RP IPA: /ˈɒb.viː.É™s/
• UK IPA: /ˈɒ.viː.É™s/ non-standard

Origin

From Latin obvius ("being in the way so as to meet, meeting, easy to access, at hand, ready, obvious"), from ob- ("before") + via ("way").

Full definition of obvious

Adjective

1. Easily discovered, seen, or understood; self-explanatory.
• 2013-08-17, Down towns, It is not obvious, to economists anyway, that cities should exist at all. Crowds of people mean congestion and costly land and labour. But there are also well-known advantages to bunching up. When transport costs are sufficiently high a firm can spend more money shipping goods to clusters of consumers than it saves on cheap land and labour.

Synonyms

• See also .

Antonyms

• unobvious
• non-obvious
• subtle

Derived terms

• obviously
• obviousness