Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Difficult to understand; recondite. See Synonyms at ambiguous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Withdrawn from view; out of the way; concealed.
- Remote from comprehension; difficult to be apprehended or understood; profound; occult; esoteric: opposed to obvious.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Concealed or hidden out of the way.
- adj. Remote from apprehension; difficult to be comprehended or understood; recondite.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge
Etymologies
- Latin abstrūsus, past participle of abstrūdere, to hide : abs-, ab-, away; see ab-1 + trūdere, to push; see treud- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Very enthusiastic, I remember they said you were, on certain abstruse points in comparative philology.”
“Greek, and Hebrew languages, and perfectly well knew not only the sciences called abstruse, but those arts which come under the denomination of polite literature.”
“Madam, all minds are not gifted with the necessary qualities which the delicacy of those fine sciences called abstruse require.”
“I am now approaching the border land of what may be called the abstruse in science, in which I humbly acknowledge it would take a vast volume to contain all I don't know; yet I hope to make plain to you this most beautiful and accurate method, and for fear I may forget to give due credit, I will say that I am indebted to Dr. Hastings for it, with whom it was an original discovery, though he told me he afterward found it had been in use by”
“I choose to believe instead that Spinrad is engaging in some kind of abstruse wordplay in which “Mike Resnick is an African SF writer” is revealed to be a pun or a palindrome or something, rather than something that he thought would be a useful addition to the discussion.”
“Belle does some kind of abstruse Boswellising; after the first meal, having gauged the kind of jests that would pay here, I observed, ‘Boswell is Barred during this cruise.’”
“Newspapers are busy with extracts; -- much complaining that it is "abstruse," neological, hard to get the meaning of.”
The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I
“(And as long as you're looking stuff up, please check "abstruse" for me.)”
“I would rather phrase abstruse medicaments of rare application; perhaps it is not very necessary, but at least it isn't cheap. ”
“Many hedge funds piled up fortunes with abstruse mathematical trading strategies that paid little attention to the individuals or companies underlying their trades.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘abstruse’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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sdamle1
echt
echt, apocalypse, resurgence, forthright, logorrhea, mercurial, torrid, exorcise, obscure, intrusive, morose, vindictive and 94 more...
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allover
reintegrate, spight, surveillant, harmonize, Colophon, workplace, bigoted, unsighted, bridgework, salutation, voltmeter, octane and 159 more...
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501
Classic
mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
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501
Classic
bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august and 401 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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Burroughs
Detestable words
purulence, bête noire, exigent, exculpate, desideratum, lucriferous, concomitant, pertinacious, pervicacious, gemütlichkeit, sublimate, sanfroid and 38 more...
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Words to research
balkanize, obstreperous, dysphoria, euphoria, sinecure, abstruse, chin music, colophon, signature, notwithstanding, nullity, nullity of a dete... and 26 more...
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Remember Not To Forget
Sephardic, Umwelt, amphiboly, untrammeled, sequela, pandiculation, tensegrity, syncretism, pugilism, shemagh, disquisition, perspicacity and 61 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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Extrude
tchotchke, lugubrious, inspissated, fissiparous, vituperation, quondam, absolutisation, artisanal, funicular, sacerdotal, abstruse, circumspect and 38 more...
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Words For Novel
viridity, effigy, paragon, congested, acrid, lilting, clandestine, plethora, accolade, sardonic, naïve, reckoning and 285 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for abstruse.
munjal.upadhyay abstract Mar 24, 2013
corylusavellana "The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again ! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings : save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight. Dec 22, 2008