Meaning of apparent in English

apparent

adjective

/əˈpær.ənt/ us

/əˈper.ənt/

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able to be seen or understood:

Her unhappiness was apparent to everyone.

[ + that ] It was becoming increasingly apparent that he could no longer take care of himself.

I was on the metro this morning when, for no apparent reason, the man opposite me suddenly screamed.

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

easy to see, recognize, or understand

obviousIt's obvious that she's upset.
clearIt was clear that he was unhappy.
apparentHer joy was apparent to everyone.
plainHis disappointment was plain to see.
evidentThe company president was impressed by her evident ambition.
manifestHis manifest lack of interest has provoked severe criticism.

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C1 [ before noun ]

seeming to exist or be true:

There are one or two apparent discrepancies between the two reports.

She has this apparent innocence which, I suspect, she uses to her advantage.

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Various reasons are given for the apparent glass ceiling women hit in many professions.
Criminal gangs are terrorizing the city with apparent impunity.
At school she was a late developer, and it wasn't until she went to university that her talents became apparent.
In the middle of the meeting she suddenly laid into him for no apparent reason.
A small worry in the back of your mind can for no apparent reason take on massive proportions in the middle of the night.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Apparent and obvious

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Seeming and purporting to be

(Definition of apparent from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

apparent | American Dictionary

apparent

adjective

/əˈpær·ənt, -ˈpeər-/

Add to word list Add to word list

able to be seen or understood:

[ + that clause ] It was becoming increasingly apparent that he could no longer look after himself.

Apparent also means seeming to be true:

The apparent cause of death was drowning, but further tests were needed.

(Definition of apparent from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of apparent

apparent

Why does the push for temporal reintegration occur after years, and sometimes decades, of apparent quiescence ?

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When speaker age is taken into account, we observe an interesting pattern in apparent time.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, bisyllabic forms resist deletion (.42) since the output would be monosyllabic and hence violate the apparent word minimality constraint.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

At several other points, too, she deplores what she considers to be other researchers' apparent misunderstanding of the model (64, 87).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We see that this apparent amplitude becomes very large for wave numbers close to zero and close to the cut-off value where g vanishes!.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Finally, gender-based variation on code selection has revealed an interesting patterning that was not apparent on a first analysis of the data.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

As will become apparent, the fixed cost of education is a simplifying assumption.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The extent and impor tance of hierarchy became apparent at the end of my first week in the factory.

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The sonograms seemed to confer an apparent objectivity which is questionable.

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When considering temporal development more closely, further considerations are apparent.

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At the crucial point the apparent connection between his emotion and the elements is broken.

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In this model, the apparent meaning of a staging is contained within a separate set of conditions which call for different kinds of interpretation.

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The apparent attempts at conceptual (re)specification as well as multidisciplinary methods are useful, but the results are mixed.

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Underlying the apparent chaos, he argued, was a clash of civilisations.

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A similar scenario is apparent with regard to training.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of apparent?