single word requests - What is deliberately using complex sentences to confuse people called?


I'm wondering if there's a word, phrase, or idiom to describe the action of deliberately confusing people by using complex sentences. For example, some politicians will throw out some big words and fancy sentences to confuse people what he or she really mean.


In Chinese, we say that the politician is "玩文字遊戲". Direct translation would be "playing a word game". And some English-Chinese dictionaries' suggest "play on word", "play with words", "word play", and "paronomasia". However, upon further researching by Googling, I don't think any of these is correct.



Answer



I would call this obfuscating.


Merriam-Webster gives us the following definition for the word:



Obfuscate: to make (something) more difficult to understand



So in the case of the politician you might say, "The speech seemed deliberately obfuscated" or "Her obfuscating delivery masked the negative consequences of her actions" or "They missed the hard truths in the speech thanks to his profuse obfuscation"


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