recondite

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin reconditus (“hidden away, secret; abstruse”), the past participle of recondō (“to put away, put back, hide”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} formed from re- (“back”) and condō (“to put together, store, hide”),^[2][3][4][5] itself from con- (“together”) and Proto-Indo-European *dhē- (“to set, put, place”).^[7][3][8] Etymonline allows a route through obsolete Middle French recondit (“hidden, secret”),^[7] which the OED dates to the late 14th century and only compares, with Italian recondito and Spanish recóndito.^[2] Dictionary.com records an earlier English spelling, recondit.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a subject, little known or understood, abstruse: 1619, in Bainbridge's Astronomicall Description of the Late Comet.^[2][10] Barnhart and Etymonline begin instead with the sense "hidden from view", in 1649 and the 1640s.^[11][7]

Semantic evolution

The Latin adjective already meant both hidden and abstruse, so the two English senses do not have to have grown one from the other.^[2] Barnhart and Etymonline give the literal sense first and the figurative one after it, before 1652 or in the 1650s,^[11][7] but the revised OED has "abstruse" thirty years before "hidden".^[2] An obsolete verb of the same spelling, to hide, came from the Latin stem and is recorded from 1578 to 1773.^[2] The word spread from subjects to study (1644), to language and literature (1722) and to writers (1788).^[2][7] Johnson (1755) gives "secret; profound; abstruse".^[12] The literal sense has faded: it is archaic in Merriam-Webster Unabridged and rare in the Shorter Oxford.^[10][13]

Timeline

• 1619 – of a subject, little known, abstruse.^[2][10]
• 1644 – of study or discussion, dealing with little-known knowledge, in Bulwer's Chirologia.^[2]
• 1649 – of a thing, hidden from view, in Bulwer's Pathomyotomia.^[2][11]
• 1722 – of language or literature, obscure.^[2]
• 1788 – of a writer, using obscure allusions, in Knox.^[2][7]
• 1825 – in entomology and botany, not easily seen, until 1866.^[2]
• 1835 – retiring, avoiding notice.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Hard to understand and beyond ordinary knowledge; abstruse, profound.^[10][14][2]
2. Dealing with or made up of abstruse matters; esoteric.^[10][14][2]
3. Of language, literature or a source, little known except to specialists.^[10][2]
4. Of a writer, using obscure allusions or references.^[2]
5. (archaic) Hidden from view; kept out of sight.^[10][2][13]

Word family

• reconditely
• reconditeness
• unrecondite

Related words

• abscond
• condiment
• condite

Usage notes

The stress varied widely in the 18th century: a 1791 comment quoted by the OED says that Johnson, Ash, Kenrick, Nares, Scott, Fry and Entick stressed the second syllable, and Sheridan and Bailey the last.^[2] Stress on the first and on the second syllable are both current.^[2][14][10]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
7. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins