You know, this might just be my personal reading of these words. When I hear "apparent" I don't necessarily think of its connection with the visual, I think "ev

You know, this might just be my personal reading of these words. When I hear "apparent" I don't necessarily think of its connection with the visual, I think "evident", in spite of the etymological connection with the visual Latin root. But to me, "appear" cries out for a visual interpretation, much more so than for "apparent". Again, I think this may be splitting hairs -- I might be making too much of this. "Apparent" in a thesaurus: http://thesaurus.com/browse/apparent http://thesaurus.com/browse/apparent "appear" in a thesaurus: http://thesaurus.com/browse/appear http://thesaurus.com/browse/appear Quite a difference.