"downright obscure" is correct and usable in written English
You can use it to describe something that is very difficult to understand or make sense of. For example, "The terms and conditions of the loan are downright obscure."
I wrote them down – a mixture of the well known and the downright obscure.
The award has a reputation for producing quirky, if not downright obscure, winners.
Then there are the jokers –Djibouti's "Djibeauty", the not-entirely-grammatical "Think Hungary more than expected" and the downright obscure "El Salvador – The 45 Minute Country".
However, a scroll through the rest of the 450-plus channels reveals very little in the way of hidden gems, and the majority are distinctly American – and downright obscure (Dog TV, anyone?).
Here you can find authors of the last one hundred years or so, some famous, some nearly forgotten, some downright obscure, which means they have the potential to be great finds.
On paper, it looked obscure, even downright wrongheaded.
The early recorded offerings of his post-Sex Pistols project, Public Image Ltd Public Image Limiteded ('78), Metal Box ('79), The Flowers Of Romance ('81) – were often "difficult" and "obscure" (sometimes downright unlistenable); the seventh album, Album, was a monstrous brute of neo-heavy metal; the eighth, Happy?, was all "industrial" gloom and doom.
Recent comments by Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson and now US Senate candidate from California Chuck Devore's communication director regarding assistance to Haiti are so hateful, misguided, myopic and, in the case or Robertson, downright strange, that they obscure the question of what they are trying to accomplish by making these comments.
The list teeters from unexpected to obscure to, well, downright whacky.
The straw boater hat Edith holds in the painting, Zimmerman says, could be interpreted as "obscuring if not downright obliterating her husband's manhood".
Robin Cooper's The Timewaster Letters (Michael O'Mara £9.99) comes bristling with endorsements from the likes of Ricky Gervais and Cooper is, indeed, the David Brent of letter writing, pestering department stores, publishers and obscure organisations with spoof letters that are pompous, crass and downright hilarious.
