obvious

Etymology

16th century, from Latin obvius (“being in the way so as to meet, meeting, easy to access, at hand, ready, obvious”), from ob- (“before”) + via (“way”). In order to avoid an awkward form such as *obvy, the Latin ending -us was maintained in the form -ous (which is otherwise equivalent to Latin -osus), just like in previous (contrast envious).

adj

1. Easily discovered, seen, or understood; self-explanatory.
   One of the most obvious results of the B.R. Modernisation Plan has been the increasing use of diesel and electric traction; a less obvious by-product is the increase in track damage possible with the new forms of traction. 1961 February, R. K. Evans, “The role of research on British Railways”, in Trains Illustrated, page 92
   It is not obvious, to economists anyway, that cities should exist at all. Crowds of people mean congestion and costly land and labour. But there are also well-known advantages to bunching up. When transport costs are sufficiently high a firm can spend more money shipping goods to clusters of consumers than it saves on cheap land and labour. 2013-08-17, “Down towns”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8849