Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In an obscure manner; in a meaning different from that which the words or circumstances commonly indicate.

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

  • adverb Darkly; obscurely.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb Acting in a manner that suggests an enigma.
  • adverb Behaving mysteriously or strangely.
  • adverb Functioning in a way that is unexplainable.

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

  • adverb in a cryptic manner

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

enigmatic +‎ -ally

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Examples

  • I was interested enough to look up the author's name enigmatically hidden under initials, but it has to be a woman, right?

    Reviews of fantasy and science fiction books Kristen 2010

  • For someone who cost €34.5 million - Manchester United's record purchase - Berbatov could not be called enigmatically inspirational just now.

    Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) 2010

  • By making it impossible to quote him directly, he was able to satisfy both of Morris’s contradictory desires—he would always come across as interesting (in that the reporter would be forced to essentially fictionalize a narrative from a conversation that was almost impossible to reference), but he’d still be presented in the way he wanted to be seen (which is to say, enigmatically).

    Chuck Klosterman on Media and Culture Chuck Klosterman 2010

  • By making it impossible to quote him directly, he was able to satisfy both of Morris’s contradictory desires—he would always come across as interesting (in that the reporter would be forced to essentially fictionalize a narrative from a conversation that was almost impossible to reference), but he’d still be presented in the way he wanted to be seen (which is to say, enigmatically).

    Chuck Klosterman on Media and Culture Chuck Klosterman 2010

  • By making it impossible to quote him directly, he was able to satisfy both of Morris’s contradictory desires—he would always come across as interesting (in that the reporter would be forced to essentially fictionalize a narrative from a conversation that was almost impossible to reference), but he’d still be presented in the way he wanted to be seen (which is to say, enigmatically).

    Chuck Klosterman on Media and Culture Chuck Klosterman 2010

  • By making it impossible to quote him directly, he was able to satisfy both of Morris’s contradictory desires—he would always come across as interesting (in that the reporter would be forced to essentially fictionalize a narrative from a conversation that was almost impossible to reference), but he’d still be presented in the way he wanted to be seen (which is to say, enigmatically).

    Eating the Dinosaur Chuck Klosterman 2009

  • By making it impossible to quote him directly, he was able to satisfy both of Morris’s contradictory desires—he would always come across as interesting (in that the reporter would be forced to essentially fictionalize a narrative from a conversation that was almost impossible to reference), but he’d still be presented in the way he wanted to be seen (which is to say, enigmatically).

    Something Instead of Nothing Chuck Klosterman 2009

  • They still managed to give their conservative rivals - the enigmatically named Social Democrats - a good hammering.

    Monday news 2009

  • Rare is the American child who finishes school without at least once being asked to write a story based on one of the eerie, enigmatically captioned illustrations from Chris Van Allsburg's 1984 picture book, "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick."

    Pied Piper Occupies Hamelin Meghan Cox Gurdon 2011

  • They still managed to give their conservative rivals - the enigmatically named Social Democrats - a good hammering.

    Archive 2009-09-01 2009

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