becloud

Verb

1. To cause to become obscure or muddled.
   • […] Intemperance and Superfluity beclouds the Mind, dulls the edge of the Apprehension, and brings upon it an unmanly Languor, bearing down all the noble Faculties of the Soul into Ignorance and Stupidity […] - 1688,...
   • […] conscience was not to be perverted by the sophistry which had beclouded my reason. - 1799, Mary Ann Radcliffe, “The Story of Fidelia”, in The Female Advocate, London: Vernor & Hood, page 164:
   • [C]hildren of his age seldom have a natural pleasure in soap and water. Therefore, […] the surface of his face and hands was dismally beclouded. - 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter VII, in...
2. To cover or surround with clouds.
   • And then while you're a cooking, they say, / Such a fogo beclouds all the room, / That the girls have to group out the way, / In search of the tongs or the broom. - 1824, The New England Farmer, volume 2, page 176:
   • Day light began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o’clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. - 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter II, in Jane Eyre. An...
   • A long sun ray shot to the zenith from the beclouded west, crossing obliquely in a faint red bar the purple band of sky above the ravine. - 1903, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Hueffer [i.e., Ford Madox Ford], chapter X, in...
3. To cast in a negative light, cast a pall over, darken.
   • What Fury has possest thee? What strange fit Usurps thy patience, and beclouds thy brow? - 1649, Francis Quarles, The Virgin Widow, London: R. Royston, act I, page 8:
   • 1856, Abraham Lincoln, speech given on 19 May, 1856 in Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, London: J.M. Dent, 1907, p. 46, We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster...
   • From the shrill triumph with which his name was dragged in, his crime must have been pilfering from a cathedral at least, but as both remembrancers were speaking at once it was difficult to distinguish his infamy from...