apparent — English Dictionary

Adjective

1. Capable of being seen, or easily seen; open to view; visible to the eye; within sight or view.

   Examples

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   […] 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.

   Her disappointment was apparent to everyone.

   The apparent cause of the fire was faulty wiring.

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   make apparent

   become apparent

   for no apparent reason

2. Clear or manifest to the understanding; plain; evident; obvious; known; palpable; indubitable.

   Examples

   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.

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   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.

3. Appearing to the eye or mind (distinguished from, but not necessarily opposed to, true or real); seeming.

   Examples

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   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.

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   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.

   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.

Adjective

1. clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment

   Synonyms

   evidentmanifestpalpablepatentplainunmistakable

   Examples

   the effects of the drought are apparent to anyone who sees the parched fields

   evident hostility

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   manifest disapproval

   patent advantages

   made his meaning plain

   it is plain that he is no reactionary

   in plain view

   a palpable lie

2. appearing as such but not necessarily so

   Synonyms

   ostensibleseeming

   Examples

   for all his apparent wealth, he had no money to pay the rent

   the committee investigated some apparent discrepancies

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   the ostensible truth of their theories

   his seeming honesty