recondite
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: biology
botany
entomology
natural-sciences
zoology
Inflected forms:
form: more recondite
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most recondite
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: Difficult, obscure.
pos: adj
examples: a recondite tractate on alchemy
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.
Humanly speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works upon recondite subjects.
gloss: Difficult, obscure.
pos: adj
examples: [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.
[T]he Apoſtle Paul had taken up many things out of theſe Recondite and Apocryphal Writings.
[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; […]
But I beseech thee, wise Doxodox! instruct me in thy dialectics, that I may embrace thy more recondite lore.
[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!
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.
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.
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.
While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky nosers spoke the language of everyday life, detecting hints of stale seaweed, or even diesel fuel.
It was understood that "the scene" meant a few intertwined subcultures known for their exhaustive debates about recondite issues (secure DNA synthesis, shrimp welfare) that members consider essential, but that most normal people know nothing about.
gloss: Difficult, obscure.
pos: adj
examples: It is delightful to see this recondite scholar [Thomas Browne]—this contemplative and refining dreamer—in the centre of his happy nor unworthy household.
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.
[...] [Victor] Cousin's lectures take their initial cue from the weighty treatises of a remote, recondite thinker named Immanuel Kant; [...]
gloss: Difficult, obscure.
pos: adj
examples: They afford a lesson to the modern metaphysical and recondite writers not to overvalue their works.
In the play of Fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful, and sometimes recondite.
The voices of recondite writers quoted at length, forgotten storytellers weaving narratives, obscure scholars savaging one another.
gloss: Hidden or removed from view.
pos: adj
tags: archaic
examples: The Eye is somewhat recondit betweene its Orbite.
My recondite eye sits distent quaintly behind the flesh-hill, and looks as little as a tomtit's.
The young urchins,... not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic.
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.
...following the recondite brook,
Sudden upon this scene I look,
And light with unfamiliar face
On chaste Diana's bathing-place
Silent calligraphy sounds that were like those of the sweet fluent water of a recondite stream.
gloss: Hidden or removed from view.
pos: adj
tags: archaic
obsolete
rare
examples: Recondite, (aculeus) concealed within the abdomen, seldom exposed to view.
gloss: Hidden or removed from view.
pos: adj
tags: archaic
rare
examples: Animals of this class are so recondite in their habits... so little known to naturalists beyond the more common species.
Derived words: irrecondite
reconditely
reconditeness
unrecondite
Translations: