occult

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Of, relating to, or dealing with supernatural influences, agencies, or phenomena.
2. adj. Beyond the realm of human comprehension; inscrutable.
3. adj. Available only to the initiate; secret: occult lore. See Synonyms at mysterious.
4. adj. Hidden from view; concealed.
5. adj. Medicine Detectable only by microscopic examination or chemical analysis, as a minute blood sample.
6. adj. Not accompanied by readily detectable signs or symptoms: occult carcinoma.
7. n. Occult practices or techniques: a student of the occult.
8. v. To conceal or cause to disappear from view.
9. v. Astronomy To conceal by occultation: The moon occulted Mars.
10. v. To become concealed or extinguished at regular intervals: a lighthouse beacon that occults every 45 seconds.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Not apparent upon mere inspection, nor deducible from what is so apparent, but discoverable only by experimentation; relating to what is thus undiscoverable by mere inspection: opposed to manifest. The Latin word was applied in the middle ages to the physical sciences and the properties of bodies to which those sciences relate. Its precise meaning is explained in the treatise “De Magnete” of Petrus Peregrinus. He says that an occult quality is simply one which is made apparent only upon experimentation, but that in that way it becomes as plain and clear as any other quality, and is no more mysterious. By occult science or philosophy was meant simply experimental science. There were many occult philosophers in northern Europe in the twelfth and the first part of the thirteenth century; but theology so swallowed up other interests that they are all forgotten except Roger Bacon, who was made prominent by the personal friendship of a pope. The ignorance and superstition of the time confounded occult science with magic.
2. Mysterious; transcendental; beyond the bounds of natural knowledge.
3. Synonyms Latent, Covert, etc. (see secret), unrevealed, recondite, abstruse, veiled, shrouded, mystic, cabalistic.
4. To cut off from view by the intervention of another body; hide; conceal; eclipse.
5. To undergo occultation; be hidden or concealed, as a star or the intermittent beam of light from a lighthouse.

Wiktionary

1. v. transitive, astronomy To cover or hide from view.
2. v. transitive, rare To dissimulate, conceal, or obfuscate.
3. adj. medicine Secret; hidden from general knowledge; undetected
4. adj. Related to the occult; pertaining to mysticism, magic, or astrology.
5. adj. Esoteric.
6. n. Supernatural affairs.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Hidden from the eye or the understanding; invisible; secret; concealed; unknown.
2. v. To eclipse; to hide from sight.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. supernatural forces and events and beings collectively
2. v. cause an eclipse of (a celestial body) by intervention
3. adj. hidden and difficult to see
4. n. supernatural practices and techniques
5. v. hide from view
6. adj. having an import not apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence; beyond ordinary understanding
7. v. become concealed or hidden from view or have its light extinguished