obfuscation

familiar word / vague understanding of the meaning

Definitions of obfuscation:
1: "confusion resulting from failure to understand.
Synonyms: bewilderment, puzzlement, befuddlement, mystification, bafflement, bemusement." (answers.com)

2: "the activity of obscuring people's understanding, leaving them baffled or bewildered. Synonym: mystification." (answers.com)

3: "darkening or obscuring the sight of something." (answers.com)

Where I ran across it:
10/13/07 – NY Times online opinion column: "Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer" by Doris Lessing.

“…Yes, I know the obfuscations of academia did not begin with Communism — as Swift, for one, tells us — but the pedantries and verbosity of Communism had their roots in German academia. And now that has become a kind of mildew blighting the whole world. It is one of the paradoxes of our time that ideas capable of transforming our societies, full of insights about how the human animal actually behaves and thinks, are often presented in unreadable language…"

My two cents:

The article is a re-print of a 1992 article written by Lessing, who has just received the 2007 Nobel prize in literature. Without a doubt this august Nobel prize winner deserves our literary respect, but just an observation on my part: anybody who uses the words "pedantries" and "verbosity" in the same sentence ought not to throw too many stones about the "obfuscations of academia"... :>)