recondite
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɹɛk(ə)nˌdaɪt/
ipa: /ɹɪˈkɒndaɪt/
ipa: /ˈɹɛkənˌdaɪt/
ipa: /ɹəˈkɑnˌdaɪt/
ipa: /ɹiˈkɑnˌdaɪt/
Forms: form: recondites
Senses: examples: text: [T]he Duchess, and the dandies, and the member's wife and all the rest of their tribulations, were happily hidden from the view by the towering bouquets of the gold plateau vases at the head of the room. [...] A contra-dance after supper was felt to be a national duty; but behind those fatal vases a plot had already been concocted by the recondites for rewarding their previous self-denial, not by a quadrille, but a galoppe.
ref: 1836, [Catherine Gore], chapter VIII, in Mrs. Armytage; or, Female Domination. … In Three Volumes, volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 134:
text: Whether subsidence plunged the huge morass, / With vegetation, soil, and trees, en masse— / Or, if the flood had drown'd the boggy all, / As streaming torrents roar'd in surly bawl— / Let dons decide, on whom these points devolve; / Such recondites are truely hard to solve.
ref: 1863, James Lawson, “The Earth’s Crust”, in The Earth’s Crust; or, Primogenial Scenes, and Other Poems, Edinburgh: Printed for the author by James Adamson & Co., […], →OCLC, part II, page 49:
text: Such as those which being uniques cannot be perfected without new punches, and if they were made complete, it would be no more than oleum et operam, etc., because they are either out of use or the times afford better, as the Antique Hebrew (spec. 7); Leusden's Samaritan (spec. 27); 2-line Great Primer Hebrew (spec. 38); the Runic, Gothic, and other recondites, the matrices for which are incomplete or useless.
ref: 1887, Talbot Baines Reed, “Thomas and John James, 1710”, in A History of the Old English Letter Foundries, […], London: Elliot Stock, […], →OCLC, footnote 1, page 225:
glosses: A recondite (hidden or obscure) person or thing.
examples: text: Here we have an uncommon acquaintance with the conditions of society in the mass, which, perhaps, some of our recondites would hardly be disposed to expect in the case of a man of a character so eminent and philosophical as [Dugald] Stewart, and addicted to studies removing him so far from the sphere of common mortals.
ref: 1856, “The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, Esq., F.R.S. Edited by Sir William Hamilton, Bart. Volume VIII. Constable and Co., Edinburgh; Hamilton and Co., London. [book review]”, in John Campbell, editor, The Christian Witness, and Church Members Magazine, volume XIII, London: Published by John Snow, […], →OCLC, page 88:
text: If the administrative economists should adopt the widespread practice of their pedagogue colleagues and express themselves, in major policy papers as elsewhere, in mathematical equations rather than words, administrative prerogative would be reinforced by recourse to the professional recondites. [...] This is a serious matter, since any obscurantism and any retreat from public accountability by the civil service cause distrust of people against their government, and of the legislative branch against the bureaucracy.
ref: 1960, Charles V. Kidd, “The Influence of Scientific and Technological Trends on Administration”, in Edmund N. Fulker, editor, The Influences of Social, Scientific, and Economic Trends on Government Administration (The William A. Jump–I. Thomas McKillop Memorial Lectures in Public Administration), Washington, D.C.: Graduate School, U.S. Department of Agriculture, →OCLC, page 50:
text: They are on middle ground now, that area of jazz which welcomes hardy perennials as well as mellowed recondites.
ref: 1976, Coda Magazine: The Journal of Jazz and Improvised Music, Toronto, Ont.: Coda Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 25, column 1:
glosses: A scholar or other person who is recondite, that is, who has mastery over his or her field, including its esoteric minutiae.