Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Difficult to understand; recondite.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Withdrawn from view; out of the way; concealed.
  • Remote from comprehension; difficult to be apprehended or understood; profound; occult; esoteric: opposed to obvious.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Concealed or hidden out of the way.
  • adjective Remote from apprehension; difficult to be comprehended or understood; recondite.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin abstrūsus, past participle of abstrūdere, to hide : abs-, ab-, away; see ab– + trūdere, to push; see treud- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • "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.

    December 22, 2008

  • abstract

    March 24, 2013

  • adjective: difficult to understand; incomprehensible

    Physics textbooks can seem so abstruse to the uninitiated that readers feel as though they are looking at hieroglyphics.

    October 20, 2016