recondite


Also found in: Thesaurus, Wikipedia.

rec·on·dite

 (rĕk′ən-dīt′, rĭ-kŏn′dīt′)
adj.
1. Not easily understood; abstruse or obscure: "To gain a reputation for wisdom a man must seem to have a store of recondite knowledge" (Bertrand Russell).
2. Concealed; hidden.

[Latin reconditus, past participle of recondere, to put away : re-, re- + condere, to put together, preserve; see dhē- in Indo-European roots.]

rec′on·dite′ly adv.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

recondite

(rɪˈkɒndaɪt; ˈrɛkənˌdaɪt)
adj
1. requiring special knowledge to be understood; abstruse
2. dealing with abstruse or profound subjects
[C17: from Latin reconditus hidden away, from re- + condere to conceal]
reˈconditely adv
reˈconditeness n
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

rec•on•dite

(ˈrɛk ənˌdaɪt, rɪˈkɒn daɪt)

adj.
1. pertaining to or dealing with very profound, difficult, or abstruse subject matter: a recondite treatise.
2. known or understood by relatively few; esoteric; arcane.
3. obscure.
[1640–50; < Latin reconditus recondite, hidden, orig. past participle of recondere to hide =re- re- + condere to bring together (con- con- + -dere to put)]
rec′on•dite`ly, adv.
rec′on•dite`ness, n.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adj.1.recondite - difficult to penetraterecondite - difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge; "the professor's lectures were so abstruse that students tended to avoid them"; "a deep metaphysical theory"; "some recondite problem in historiography"
esoteric - confined to and understandable by only an enlightened inner circle; "a compilation of esoteric philosophical theories"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

recondite

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

recondite

adjective
Beyond the understanding of an average mind:
Slang: heavy.
The American Heritage® Roget's Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Translations

recondite

[rɪˈkɒndaɪt] ADJ (frm) → recóndito
Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

recondite

[ˈrɛkəndaɪt] adjabstrus(e), obscur(e)
Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

recondite

adjabstrus
Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

recondite

[rɪˈkɒndaɪt] adj (frm) → recondito/a
Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995
References in classic literature ?
But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its inmates.
Had he that deep-seated recondite complaint, and did any doctor find it out?
Still further, like a human, he could and did perceive, and such perceptions did flower in his brain as concepts, certainly not so wide and deep and recondite as those of humans, but concepts nevertheless.
I remarked, moreover, with respect to experiments, that they become always more necessary the more one is advanced in knowledge; for, at the commencement, it is better to make use only of what is spontaneously presented to our senses, and of which we cannot remain ignorant, provided we bestow on it any reflection, however slight, than to concern ourselves about more uncommon and recondite phenomena: the reason of which is, that the more uncommon often only mislead us so long as the causes of the more ordinary are still unknown; and the circumstances upon which they depend are almost always so special and minute as to be highly difficult to detect.
Her vagaries soon ceased to puzzle me: the psychology of Jane Braithwaite was not recondite. In the night it had dawned upon her that Rattray had found me harmless and was done with me, therefore there was no need for her to put herself out any further on my account.
With her near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework.
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
Sometimes she might have been seen squatting upon her haunches in front of a huge wooden basin, and kneading poee-poee with terrific vehemence, dashing the stone pestle about as if she would shiver the vessel into fragments; on other occasions, galloping about the valley in search of a particular kind of leaf, used in some of her recondite operations, and returning home, toiling and sweating, with a bundle of it, under which most women would have sunk.
Babcock's birthplace, and, for reasons too recondite to unfold, his visit there always assumed in his mind a jocular cast.
We hear from mathematicians that bees have practically solved a recondite problem, and have made their cells of the proper shape to hold the greatest possible amount of honey, with the least possible consumption of precious wax in their construction.
A representative sentence is this: 'Although there be none so ignorant that doth not know, neither any so impudent that will not confesse, friendship to be the jewell of humaine joye; yet whosoever shall see this amitie grounded upon a little affection, will soone conjecture that it shall be dissolved upon a light occasion.' Others of Lyly's affectations are rhetorical questions, hosts of allusions to classical history, and literature, and an unfailing succession of similes from all the recondite knowledge that he can command, especially from the fantastic collection of fables which, coming down through the Middle Ages from the Roman writer Pliny, went at that time by the name of natural history and which we have already encountered in the medieval Bestiaries.
Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, common state which the writer restores to you.