turbid

comparative more turbid · superlative most turbid

1. Having the lees or sediment disturbed; not clear. (of a liquid)

   turbid wine

   5 more examples

   turbid water

   On the 6th October, the 18th day of her illness, she presented the following phenomena: — pulse small and quick — urine yellow and turbid.

   1827, The Medico-chirurgical Review and Journal of Medical Science

   He seeks in vain to occupy his days with rural pursuits; he to whom the excitements of a metropolis, with all its corruption and its vices, were the sole sources of the turbid stream that he called "pleasure!"

   1853, Pisistratus Caxton [pseudonym; Edward Bulwer-Lytton], “Final Chapter”, in “My Novel”; Or Varieties in English Life […], volume IV, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book twelfth, page 283

   He perceived more clearly the cruelty of Nature, to whom our refinement and piety are but as bubbles, hurrying downwards on the turbid waters.

   1907, E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey, Part II, XXIII [Uniform ed., p. 217]

   This makes the estimation of the refractive index of the turbid liquid quite problematic.

   2004, Jukka A. Räty, Kai-Erik Peiponen, Toshimitsu Asakura, UV-Visible Reflection Spectroscopy of Liquids, →ISBN, page 30

   Synonyms: confused, cloudy, disordered, disturbed, droff, roiled

2. Smoky or misty.

   The turbid air over major cities is often described as a dust dome.

   2014, Thad Godish, Wayne T. Davis, Joshua S. Fu, Air Quality, →ISBN, page 112

   2 more examples

   Towards the last I increased the heat, and by that means produced a very turbid air, of which I collected a prodigious quantity.

   1776, Joseph Priestley, Experiments And Observations On Different Kinds Of Air

   Involuntarily, he stepped behind some alder brush off the trail. Another flutter of wind thinning the turbid mist.

   2012, Agnes Christina Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness, →ISBN

   Synonyms: fumid, hazy, cloudish, cloudlike, cloudly, cloudy, foggy, foglike

3. Unclear; confused; obscure.

   Those turbid emotions swirled inside him again—part frustration, part anxiety.

   2012, Julia James, The Dark Side Of Desire, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Motion, to take a good example, is originally a turbid sensation, of which the native shape is perhaps best preserved in the phenomenon of vertigo.

   2010, Adrian Mackenzie, Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network Cultures, →ISBN, page 1

   In the aforementioned paragraph 406 of the Encyclopedia, magnetic ecstasy is described as a confused and turbid experience because its content does not present itself in rational form: for this reason the state of the somnambulist should not be considered as a possible path to cognition (Erkenntnis).

   2016, Cecilia Muratori, The First German Philosopher, →ISBN

   Synonyms: ambiguous, equivocal, abstruse, Chinese, dense, enigmatic, fathomless, bottomless