A.Word.A.Day --recondite

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Aug 29, 2011

This week's theme
Miscellaneous words

This week's words
recondite
cicatrize
perspicuous
refulgent
plenary

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Usually the words in AWAD form a theme, but once in a while we simply feature words that are engaging by themselves. Consider this a cross-country drive through the dictionary, with no itinerary in hand.

We'll make several stops along the way, but who knows where we might stop, and why. Let's see what kind of words we come across. We'll meet words that are long or short and unusual or familiar, but all of them, just like people, are interesting if we care enough to learn about them.

recondite

PRONUNCIATION:

(REK-uhn-dyt, ri-KON-dyt)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Concerned with a profound, esoteric, or difficult subject.
2. Little known; obscure.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin recondere (to hide), re- (back) + condere (to put together), from con- (with) + -dere (to put). Earliest documented use: 1619.

USAGE:

"With its fragmented words, multilingual puns and recondite allusions, the verse of Paul Celan hovers on the edge of untranslatability."
Mark M. Anderson; A Poet at War With His Language; The New York Times; Dec 31, 2000.

"The sight of beautiful people making beautiful babies is a huge turn-on; but a recondite TV actress dying in a state of dementia, as Marty would say, 'not so much'."
Lynn Crosbie; Brangelina Babies; The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada); Aug 5, 2008.

See more usage examples of recondite in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character. -Walter Scott, novelist and poet (1771-1832)

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