Recondite

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈɹɛk(ə)nˌdaɪt/

Definitions

1. Obscure and difficult for most people to understand due to dealing with highly specialized or profound subject matter
2. Not easily understood due to being obscure or requiring specialized knowledge that is generally beyond the grasp of the average person
3. Difficult to comprehend because it relates to esoteric subjects or the deep complexity of certain fields of study

Etymology: The Latin verb "recondere" meant to put something back into storage or hide it away, and its past participle "reconditus" came to mean "concealed" or "hidden." Something recondite is one that has been tucked out of sight, and in English that hiddenness turned from physical to intellectual: a recondite subject is one whose depths lie beyond the reach of ordinary understanding. The word is built from "re-" (again, back) and "condere" (to store, put together, or establish), which is also the source of words like "condiment" and "abscond." Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan all kept near-identical forms, such as "recondito," so the same Latin participle lies behind the word across much of Romance Europe.

Synonyms: abstruse, esoteric, obscure, arcane

Antonyms: simple, obvious, clear