Nebulous

 WORD OF THE DAY

nebulous / adjective / NEB-yuh-lus

Definition
1a: of, relating to, or resembling a nebula
1b: nebular
2: indistinct, vague

Examples
"Instead of promoting nebulous concepts of 'diplomacy,' we should turn to the principles of negotiations and focus on concrete questions."
— Anastassia Fedyk, The Los Angeles Times, 12 June 2022

The reasons for all of this are a bit nebulous with lots of talk about demand unexpectedly outpacing supply, but there’s likely a healthy dose of opportunism here as well.
— Jonah Flicker, Robb Report, 19 June 2022

Did You Know?
Nebulous may sound other-worldly—after all, it’s related to nebula, which refers to a distant galaxy or an interstellar cloud of gas or dust—but its mysteriousness is rooted in more earthly unknowns.
Both words ultimately come from Latin nebula, meaning “mist, cloud,” and as far back as the 14th century nebulous could mean simply “cloudy” or “foggy.”
Nebulous has since the late 17th century been the adjective correlating to nebula (as in “nebulous gas”), but the word is more familiar in its figurative use, where it describes things that are indistinct or vague, as when Jack London wrote of “ideas that were nebulous at best and that in reality were remembered sensations.”
In English, nebula refers to a cloud of gas or dust in deep space, or in less technical contexts, simply to a galaxy.
One's memory of a long-past event, for example, will often be nebulous; a teenager might give a nebulous recounting of an evening's events upon coming home; or a politician might make a campaign promise but give only a nebulous description of how he or she would fulfill it.