clouded

1. 1
   adjective

   Covered with or full of clouds.

   Like a ceiling of gray drawn over the world, blocking the sun.

   The clouded heavens threatened rain before evening.

   A clouded sky hid the mountain peaks from the hikers.

   Similarcloudy, overcast, gray, dull

   Oppositeclear, cloudless, sunny

2. 2
   adjectivefiguratively

   Made unclear or hard to understand, as if hidden by mystery.

   Like a riddle wrapped in mist: the answer is there but hard to make out.

   His clouded reasoning made the whole meeting drag on.

   The motive behind the sudden gift remained clouded.

   Similarmuddled, confused, murky, obscure, unclear

   Oppositeclear, lucid, transparent

   Note

   The weather turned inward: what clouds do to a view, this does to a motive, a situation or a person's circumstances. Good Kid's "Mimi's Delivery Service" (2023) pictures trouble as a fog closing in on every side of a person, a haze that surrounds rather than a single hidden fact. When a cause is named (her judgment was clouded by grief), the word leans toward the verb form and its sense of dulling the mind.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of cloud.

   Fog clouded the valley by dawn.

   Grief clouded her thoughts for weeks afterward.

   Note

   The verb form behind the adjectives, and often hard to tell from them. With a doer or a by-phrase it is the participle of transitive cloud: grief clouded her thoughts, and her judgment was clouded by fatigue, where cloud means to dull the mind. Intransitive cloud, "to become foggy," uses it as a past tense or after have: the glass clouded, and the sky had clouded by noon.

4. 4
   adjective

   Dim or blurry, lacking clearness.

   Like a foggy windshield that blurs the road ahead.

   The patient's clouded cornea blurred everything beyond a few feet.

   A clouded lens softened the old photograph into a gray haze.

   Similarcloudy, hazy, blurry, murky, milky

   Oppositeclear, transparent, sharp

5. 5
   adjective

   Marked or variegated with spots or patches of different shades.

   Like the mottled patches on a tortoiseshell cat.

   The clouded coat of the leopard blends into the dappled shade.

   Collectors prize the clouded patterning on antique glass.

   Similarmottled, dappled, spotted, variegated, speckled

   Oppositeplain, uniform

   Note

   Here a cloud is a pattern, not a haze. A clouded cane is one whose surface is mottled with soft patches of another shade. Do not confuse it with the "dim or blurry" meaning: nothing is obscured or failing, and the marking itself is what the word praises or describes.

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