becloud

present singular third person beclouds · participle present beclouding · participle past beclouded · past beclouded

1. transitiveTo cause to become obscure or muddled.

   […] conscience was not to be perverted by the sophistry which had beclouded my reason.

   1799, Mary Ann Radcliffe, “The Story of Fidelia”, in The Female Advocate, London: Vernor & Hood, page 164

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   […] Intemperance and Superfluity beclouds the Mind, dulls the edge of the Apprehension, and brings upon it an unmanly Languor, bearing down all the noble Faculties of the Soul into Ignorance and Stupidity […]

   1688, Thomas Tryon, Monthly Observations for the Preserving of Health with a Long and Comfortable Life, London, page 9

   [C]hildren of his age seldom have a natural pleasure in soap and water. Therefore, […] the surface of his face and hands was dismally beclouded.

   1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter VII, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC, page 115

   She thought of Eleanor with her habit of giving spontaneous utterance to stray and irresponsible accusations. Caroline found the true facts everywhere beclouded.

   1957, Muriel Spark, The Comforters, New York: Avon, published 1965, Part 2, Chapter 8, p. 196

2. passivetransitiveusuallyTo cover or surround with clouds.

   Day light began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o’clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight.

   1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter II, in Jane Eyre. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 19

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   And then while you're a cooking, they say, / Such a fogo beclouds all the room, / That the girls have to group out the way, / In search of the tongs or the broom.

   1824, The New England Farmer, volume 2, page 176

   A long sun ray shot to the zenith from the beclouded west, crossing obliquely in a faint red bar the purple band of sky above the ravine.

   1903, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Hueffer [i.e., Ford Madox Ford], chapter X, in Romance […], London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC, part fourth (Casa Riego), page 366

3. figurativelytransitiveTo cast in a negative light, cast a pall over, darken.

   1856, Abraham Lincoln, speech given on 19 May, 1856 in Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, London: J.M. Dent, 1907, p. 46, We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

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   What Fury has possest thee? What strange fit Usurps thy patience, and beclouds thy brow?

   1649, Francis Quarles, The Virgin Widow, London: R. Royston, act I, page 8

   From the shrill triumph with which his name was dragged in, his crime must have been pilfering from a cathedral at least, but as both remembrancers were speaking at once it was difficult to distinguish his infamy from the scandal which beclouded the memory of Mrs. Saunders’ brother’s wife’s mother—who may have been a regicide, and was certainly not a nice person as Mrs. Crick painted her.

   1910, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “Blood-Feud of Toad-Water”, in Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC, page 35