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opaque

/oʊˈpeɪk//əʊˈpeɪk/·adjective
not letting light through; impossible to see through or understand
Fig. 1 — A solid panel slides down into the garden frame, and the world splits into a near side and a gone side.
01Definition

Opaque is where seeing stops: an opaque material lets neither light nor image through — wood, metal, stone, the mug your coffee hides in. From Latin opacus, 'shaded, dark', it reached English through French, which is why the -que ending sounds as a plain /k/. The figurative sense is the busier one in academic prose: opaque writing, opaque pricing, an opaque bureaucracy — meaning constructed, deliberately or not, so that outsiders cannot see in. Where lucid prose lights the way and ambiguous prose offers two readings, opaque prose offers none.

02In use
  • iBlackout curtains are opaque by design: no street light gets in, and no silhouette gets out.
  • iiThe contract's terms were so opaque that even the lawyers read them twice.
  • iiiCritics call the fund's fee structure opaque, and its managers seem to prefer it so.
03Collocations
  • opaque glass
  • an opaque process
  • opaque pricing
  • remain opaque
  • opaque to outsiders

Family opacity (noun) · opaquely (adverb)

04Relations

=impenetrable, murky, cloudy, unclear, impervious

≠transparent, lucid

06TOEFL & IELTS

TOEFL reading rewards the figurative sense: when a passage calls an author's argument or a system opaque, the tested meaning is 'resistant to understanding', not anything about light — and 'remain opaque' and 'opaque to outsiders' are the collocations that carry it. Pronunciation is the other exam surface: oh-PAKE, /oʊˈpeɪk/, stress on the second syllable with the -que as a bare /k/; 'OH-pack' is the recorded learner error. The noun is opacity, /oʊˈpæsəti/, with a vowel change worth hearing once.

07Asked
How do you pronounce opaque?
oh-PAKE — /oʊˈpeɪk/ in American English, /əʊˈpeɪk/ in British — with the stress on the second syllable and the French-inherited -que sounding as a simple /k/, like cheque or unique. The common learner mistakes are 'OH-pack' and front-stressing the word. The noun opacity shifts both stress and vowel: oh-PASS-ih-tee.
What does opaque mean?
Blocking light completely — and with it, any view of what lies beyond. Wood, metal, and ceramic are opaque; so is the panel in the scene above, which swallows a crossing butterfly for its whole width and stops a sunbeam dead on its surface as a bright smudge. Where a transparent material hands the scene behind it to your eye, an opaque one ends the matter at its own face.
What does it mean to call writing or a system opaque?
That it cannot be seen into: opaque prose resists understanding, opaque pricing conceals what you will actually pay, an opaque bureaucracy gives outsiders no view of how decisions happen. The tone runs neutral-to-accusing — 'deliberately opaque' is a common escalation — though critics sometimes grant literary opacity a kind of artfulness. Either way the metaphor is exact: the surface returns your gaze.
What is the difference between opaque and translucent?
Translucent materials let light through but scramble the image — frosted glass glows, but the shapes behind it blur; opaque materials stop even the light, so nothing glows and nothing shows. Bathroom windows are translucent by design (brightness without exposure); a brick wall is opaque by nature. The boundary is simple: any glow at all, and the material has left opacity behind.
What are opaque tights or opaque glass?
Product language for 'cannot be seen through': opaque tights are the dense kind, opposed to sheer; opaque glass is manufactured — frosted, coated, or coloured — to block the view while usually keeping some light. Commerce stretches the word slightly beyond physics — the view, not the light, is what must be blocked — which makes shopping labels a rare place where a formal adjective does everyday work.
What is the opposite of opaque?
Transparent, with translucent between them: image and light, light only, neither. The figurative ladder is worth owning too — opaque prose finds its true opposite in lucid prose, writing that lets the meaning shine through, which is precisely what the Latin roots promise: opacus, shaded; lucidus, full of light.