Arcane vs Archaic - What's the difference?
arcane | archaic |
Understood by only a few; obscure; requiring secret or mysterious knowledge.
* 1997 : Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault'', page 67, ''The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)
(archaeology, US, usually capitalized) A general term for the prehistoric period intermediate between the earliest period (‘
* 1958 , Wiley, Gordon R., and Philip Phillips, Method and Theory in American Archaeology , University of Chicago Press, Chicago, page #107:
(paleoanthropology) (A member of) an archaic variety of Homo sapiens .
* 2009 , The Human Lineage , page 432:
Of or characterized by antiquity; old-fashioned, quaint, antiquated.
* 1848 , , The Biglow Papers :
* 1887 , , Historia Numorum A Manual Of Greek Numismatics :
* 1898 , , The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast :
(of words) No longer in ordinary use, though still used occasionally to give a sense of antiquity.
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Belonging to the archaic period
As adjectives the difference between arcane and archaic
is that arcane is understood by only a few; obscure; requiring secret or mysterious knowledge while archaic is of or characterized by antiquity; old-fashioned, quaint, antiquated.As a noun archaic is
a general term for the prehistoric period intermediate between the earliest period (‘’, ‘Paleo-American’, ‘American‐paleolithic’, &c.) of human presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the most recent prehistoric period (‘Woodland’, etc.).arcane
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- A “signature” was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane' knowledge. Knowing was '''guessing''' and ' interpreting , not observing or demonstrating.
Synonyms
* esoteric * recondite * clandestineAntonyms
* mundaneReferences
* * * ----archaic
English
Noun
(en noun)Paleo-Indian’, ‘Paleo-American’, ‘American?paleolithic’, &c .) of human presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the most recent prehistoric period (‘Woodland’, etc.).
- [...] Archaic Stage [...] the stage of migratory hunting and gathering cultures continuing into environmental conditions approximately those of the present.
- [...] prefer the third explanation for the advanced-looking features of Neandertals (Chapter 7) and the Ngandong hominins (Chapter 6), but they have had little to say about the post-Erectine archaics from China.
Adjective
(en adjective)- A person familiar with the dialect of certain portions of Massachusetts will not fail to recognize, in ordinary discourse, many words now noted in English vocabularies as archaic , the greater part of which were in common use about the time of the King James translation of the Bible. Shakespeare stands less in need of a glossary to most New Englanders than to many a native of the Old Country.
- There is in the best archaic coin work [of the Greeks] ... a strength and a delicacy which are often wanting in the fully developed art of a later age.
- Brann's compass of words, idioms and phrases harks back to the archaic and reaches forward to the futuristic.''
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