Murkiness is the quality of being dark, cloudy, and difficult to see through. When a pond has murky water, you can't see the bottom because dirt, algae, or sediment clouds it. A murky puddle on a rainy street looks brown and opaque instead of clear.

The word also describes situations that are unclear, confusing, or hard to understand. When the murkiness of a mystery deepens, the plot becomes more puzzling and the clues harder to interpret. A complicated math problem might have a murkiness that makes it tough to know where to start.

In writing or speaking, murkiness means the opposite of clarity. If a set of instructions has too much murkiness, readers struggle to figure out what they're supposed to do. Scientists try to cut through the murkiness of difficult questions by designing careful experiments that lead to clearer answers.

Whether you're peering into murky water or trying to understand a murky explanation, you're dealing with something that hides the truth instead of revealing it plainly.