• recondite •
Pronunciation: re-kên-dait • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Concealed, mysterious, not readily seen or apprehended. 2. Abstruse, arcane, incomprehensible to all but experts.
Notes: Although the meaning of this word is rather recondite, the word itself is quite pedestrian: the adverb is expectable reconditely and the noun, reconditeness. It exhibits no other derivations.
In Play: Since the original meaning of the root of today's word was "to put away", "out of sight" was its original meaning: "Intrigued by the recondite inner workings of the curious little machine, Rusty Carr began immediately to take it apart." Today it is used far more widely in the second sense: "R. Cain gets most of his information from recondite sources that are difficult for others to find and check."
Word History: Today's Good Word comes to us from Latin reconditus, the past participle of recondere "to put away", made up of re- "again, back" + condere "to put together, preserve". The base verb here, condere is itself a complex of con- "together (with)" + dere "to put", which derives from the same primitive root as English do. English also borrowed the past participle of condere as condite "preserved; preserves", a word now considered obsolete. However, incondite "put together, built badly", based on the same Latin verb, still lurks in the deeper dictionaries.
RECONDITE
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• The Good Dr. Goodword
so arcane is this word; I was wondering when I opened the email whether this was a someone from a tribe of perverted repair people, a mineral or merely some unknown adjective.
mark that-whooshing-sound-is-the-first-suggestion-going-over-your-head Bailey
mark that-whooshing-sound-is-the-first-suggestion-going-over-your-head Bailey
Today is the first day of the rest of your life, Make the most of it...
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