Reconditeness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The characteristic of holding intricate and obscure knowledge that is challenging for most to comprehend
2. The quality of being profoundly complex and not easily grasped by ordinary understanding
3. A state in which knowledge or information is deeply hidden or only accessible to those with specialized insight

Etymology: Reconditeness is a plain suffixed formation: the adjective "recondite" with the English suffix "-ness", which turns an adjective into a noun for a quality. The adjective itself comes from Latin "reconditus", the past participle of "recondere", meaning "to put back" or "to hide away," built from "re-" (back) and "condere" (to put together, store). The original sense is literal: something stored or put away out of sight. That physical idea of concealment carried over into the figurative sense. A recondite subject is one hidden from ordinary view, so it has to be dug out by specialized study. The noun therefore names the quality of being that kind of deeply hidden, difficult material, rather than the difficulty of a particular text or idea.

Synonyms: abstruseness, esotericism

Antonyms: clarity, simplicity