recondite
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɹɛk(ə)nˌdaɪt/
ipa: /ɹɪˈkɒndaɪt/
ipa: /ˈɹɛkənˌdaɪt/
ipa: /ɹəˈkɑnˌdaɪt/
ipa: /ɹiˈkɑnˌdaɪt/
Forms: form: more recondite
form: most recondite
Senses: examples: text: a recondite tractate on alchemy
text: But I hope this new Messenger from Heauen doth bring happie tidings of some munificent and liberall Patron to these rauishing (but impouerishing) studies, by whose gracious bountie the most recondite mysteries of this abstruse and diuine science [astronomy] shall at length be manifested.
ref: 1618 December, John Bainbridge, An Astronomicall Description of the Late Comet: From the 18. of Nouemb. 1618. to the 16. of December following. […], London: Printed by Edward Griffin for Iohn Parker, published 1619, →OCLC, page 42; republished in A Supplement to the Third Volume of the General Chronicle and Literary Magazine, volume III, number XV, London: Sold for the proprietors, by Edmund Lloyd, […] & Gale & Curtis, […], 1811, →OCLC, page 474:
text: Humanly speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works upon recondite subjects.
ref: 1879–1880, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Steerage Scenes”, in The Amateur Emigrant: From the Clyde to Sandy Hook, Chicago, Ill.: Stone and Kimball, published 18 January 1895, →OCLC, page 40:
glosses: Difficult, obscure.
Difficult to grasp or understand; abstruse, profound.
raw_tags: of areas of discussion or research
examples: text: [T]here was in the man much learning, and that of the more inward & recondit, a great Antiquary, and one that had a certain large poſſeſſion of Divine and Humane Lawes.
ref: 1644, J[ohn] B[ulwer], “Certain Cavtionary Notions, Extracted out of the Ancient and Moderne Rhetoricians, for the Compleating of this Art of Manuall Rhetorique, and the Better Regulating the Important Gestures of the Hand & Fingers”, in Chirologia: or The Naturall Language of the Hand. […] Whereunto is added Chironomia: Or, The Art of Manuall Rhetoricke. […], London: Printed by Tho[mas] Harper, and are to be sold by Henry Twyford, […], →OCLC, page 137:
text: [T]he Apoſtle Paul had taken up many things out of theſe Recondite and Apocryphal Writings.
ref: 1722, Francis Lee, An Epistolary Discourse, Concerning the Books of Ezra, Genuine and Spurious: But More Particularly the Second Apocryphal Book under that Name, and the Variations of the Arabick Copy from the Latin. […], London: Printed by Geo[rge] James; sold by M. Smith, […], →OCLC, §46, page 41:
text: [Of Southey] I look in vain for any writer, who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with so many just and original reflections, in a style so lively and poignant, yet so uniformly classical and perspicuous; […]
ref: 1817, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “The Author’s Obligations to Critics, and the Probable Occasion—Principles of Modern Criticism—Mr. [Robert] Southey’s Works and Character”, in Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, volume I, London: Rest Fenner, […], →OCLC, page 65:
text: But I beseech thee, wise Doxodox! instruct me in thy dialectics, that I may embrace thy more recondite lore.
ref: 1849, Herman Melville, “They Visit One Doxodox”, in Mardi: And a Voyage Thither. […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 279:
text: [T]heir [the Druids'] Bards (sometimes sweet and delightful) were more often wild and fantastic, even unto madness! their Eubages affect the reconditest secrets of physical philosophy; and their female Druids, like the Sibyls of old, were often maniac with self-delusions, and with idle, but ingeniously contrived prophetic tidings!
ref: 1850, “Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, among the Anglo-Saxons. No. II. The Druids. […]”, in The Anglo Saxon, London: T. Bosworth, […], →OCLC, page 226:
text: The suggestions for certain personages of the tale, both law-abiding and lawless, came from various sources which, perhaps, here and there, some reader might have recognised. They are not very recondite.
ref: 1920, Joseph Conrad, “Author’s Note”, in The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (The Works of Joseph Conrad), London: William Heinemann, published 1921, →OCLC, page xvii:
text: Images sprang to his mind as profuse and fat as mushrooms after rain, and being well read in the Scriptures, the works of the fathers and the Latin moralists, he was never at a loss for a recondite allusion.
ref: 1947 January 25, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 15, in Catalina: A Romance, Melbourne, Vic.; London: William Heinemann, published 1948, →OCLC, page 83:
text: It was hardly foreordained that a poor orphan from darkest Brittany—taciturn, dumpy, physically unprepossessing, and a scholarship boy to boot—working in the recondite realms of Semitic philology, should play such a role in his time.
ref: 1992 autumn, The American Scholar, volume 61, Washington, D.C.: United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 576, column 1:
text: While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky nosers spoke the language of everyday life, detecting hints of stale seaweed, or even diesel fuel.
ref: 2004 September 28, Alexander McCall Smith, chapter 21, in The Sunday Philosophy Club, London: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 224:
glosses: Difficult, obscure.
Little known; esoteric, secret.
raw_tags: of areas of discussion or research
examples: text: It is delightful to see this recondite scholar [Thomas Browne]—this contemplative and refining dreamer—in the centre of his happy nor unworthy household.
ref: 1836 October, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], “Art. I.—Sir Thomas Browne’s Works, Including His Life and Correspondence. Edited by Simon Wilkin, F.L.S. 4 vols. 8vo. London: 1836 [book review]”, in The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, volume LXIV, number CXXIX, Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Company, for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, […]; Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, →OCLC, page 24:
text: Our musician [Johann Sebastian Bach] rapidly became known far and wide throughout the musical centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer, as a brilliant improviser, and as an organist beyond rivalry.
ref: 1884, George T[itus] Ferris, “Bach”, in The Great German Composers (Appletons’ New Handy-volume Series), New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, […], →OCLC, section I, page 10:
text: [...] [Victor] Cousin's lectures take their initial cue from the weighty treatises of a remote, recondite thinker named Immanuel Kant; [...]
ref: 1998, Gene H. Bell-Villada, “Introduction: The Idea, the Phrase, the Problem”, in Art for Art’s Sake & Literary Life: How Politics and Markets Helped Shape the Ideology & Culture of Aestheticism 1790–1990 (Stages), Lincoln, Neb.; London: University of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 1:
glosses: Difficult, obscure.
Having mastery over one's field, including its esoteric minutiae; learned.
raw_tags: of scholars
of areas of discussion or research
examples: text: They afford a lesson to the modern metaphysical and recondite writers not to overvalue their works.
ref: 1788, Vicesimus Knox, Winter Evenings, II. v. i. 109:
text: In the play of Fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful, and sometimes recondite.
ref: 1817, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “The Characteristic Defects of [William] Wordsworth’s Poetry, with the Principles from which the Judgement, that They are Defects, is Deduced—Their Proportion to the Beauties—For the Greatest Part Characteristic of His Theory only”, in Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, volume II, London: Rest Fenner, […], →OCLC, page 172:
text: The voices of recondite writers quoted at length, forgotten storytellers weaving narratives, obscure scholars savaging one another.
ref: 2004 Autumn, American Scholar, 129
glosses: Difficult, obscure.
Deliberately employing abstruse or esoteric allusions or references; intentionally obscure.
raw_tags: of writers
of areas of discussion or research
examples: text: The Eye is somewhat recondit betweene its Orbite.
ref: 1649, John Bulwer, Pathomyotomia, ii. ii. 108:
text: My recondite eye sits distent quaintly behind the flesh-hill, and looks as little as a tomtit's.
ref: 1796, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Letters, I. 209:
text: The young urchins,... not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic.
ref: 1823, Charles Lamb, Old Benchers in Elia, section 190:
text: How such a man should suppose himself unwell without reason, you may think strange. But I have found nothing the matter with him. He may have some deep-seated recondite complaint. I can't say. I only say, that at present I have not found it out.
ref: 1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, “Mr. Merdle’s Complaint”, in Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC, book the first (Poverty), page 185:
text: ...following the recondite brook,
Sudden upon this scene I look,
And light with unfamiliar face
On chaste Diana's bathing-place
ref: 1887, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Canoe Speaks”, in Underwoods:
text: Silent calligraphy sounds that were like those of the sweet fluent water of a recondite stream.
ref: 2002, Nick Tosches, In the Hand of Dante, section 253:
glosses: Hidden or removed from view.
examples: text: Recondite, (aculeus) concealed within the abdomen, seldom exposed to view.
ref: 1825, Thomas Say, Say's Entomol., Glossary, 28:
topics: biology
botany
entomology
natural-sciences
glosses: Hidden or removed from view.
Difficult to see, especially because it is hidden by another structure.
raw_tags: of a structure
examples: text: Animals of this class are so recondite in their habits... so little known to naturalists beyond the more common species.
ref: 1835, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 125, 361:
topics: biology
natural-sciences
zoology
glosses: Hidden or removed from view.
Avoiding notice (particularly human notice); having a tendency to hide; shy.
synonyms: retiring
Derived terms: reconditely
reconditeness