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Secret vs Recondite - What's the difference?

secret | recondite |

As adjectives the difference between secret and recondite

is that secret is being or kept hidden while recondite is of areas of study and literature Difficult, obscure; particularly.

As verbs the difference between secret and recondite

is that secret is to make or keep secret while recondite is to hide, cover up, conceal.

As a noun secret

is knowledge that is hidden and intended to be kept hidden.

secret

English

Noun

  • (countable, uncountable) Knowledge that is hidden and intended to be kept hidden.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)
  • , volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets , spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}
  • * Rambler
  • To tell our secrets is often folly; to communicate those of others is treachery.
  • (uncountable) Something not understood or known.
  • * Milton
  • All secrets of the deep, all nature's works.
  • (archaic, in the plural) The genital organs.
  • Synonyms

    * (l)

    Derived terms

    * family secret * in secret * keep secret * open secret * Oxford secret * secretist * state secret * top secret * trade secret * Victoria's Secret

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Being or kept hidden.
  • * Bible, Deuteronomy xxix. 29
  • The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
  • , title=(The China Governess) , chapter=1 citation , passage=The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret magic of a promise rather than the overpowering splendour of a great architectural achievement.}}
  • (obsolete) Withdrawn from general intercourse or notice; in retirement or secrecy; secluded.
  • * Fenton
  • secret in her sapphire cell
  • (obsolete) Faithful to a secret; not inclined to divulge or betray confidence; secretive.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Secret Romans, that have spoke the word, / And will not palter.
  • (obsolete) Separate; distinct.
  • * Cudworth
  • They suppose two other divine hypostases superior thereunto, which were perfectly secret from matter.

    Alternative forms

    * secrette (obsolete)

    Synonyms

    * private * dern * confidential * concealed

    Antonyms

    * overt

    Derived terms

    * secret admirer * secret agent * secret ballot * secret code * secret partner * secret police * * secret Santa * secret service * secret society * secret writing * secretive * secretly * secretness * unsecret

    Verb

  • To make or keep secret.
  • * 1984 , Peter Scott Lawrence, Around the mulberry tree, Firefly Books, p. 26
  • [...] she would unfold the silk, press it with a smooth wooden block that she'd heated in the oven, and then once more secret it away.
  • * 1986 , InfoWorld, InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
  • Diskless workstations [...] make it difficult for individuals to copy information [...] onto a diskette and secret it away.
  • * 1994 , Phyllis Granoff & Koichi Shinohara, Monks and magicians: religious biographies in Asia, Mosaic Press, p. 50
  • To prevent the elixir from reaching mankind and thereby upsetting the balance of the universe, two gods secret it away.

    Usage notes

    * All other dictionaries label this sense 'obsolete', but the citations above and on the citations page demonstrate recent usage as part of the idiom "secret [something] away". * The present participle and past forms secreting and secreted are liable to confusion with the corresponding heteronymous forms of the similar verb secrete.

    Quotations

    *

    Derived terms

    * secrete

    References

    * “ †?secret, v.'']” listed in the '''' [2nd Ed.; 1989]
    Tagged as ''obsolete''. Notes: “In the inflected forms it is not easy to distinguish between ?''secret'' and [http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50218071 secrete ''v.
    ” * “ Se"cret' (?), v. t.]” listed on [http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.page.sh?page=1301 page 1,301] of '''' (1913)
    '''Se"cret
    (?), v. t. To keep secret. [Obs. ''Bacon .

    Statistics

    *

    Anagrams

    * ----

    recondite

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (of areas of study and literature) Difficult, obscure; particularly:
  • # Abstruse, profound, difficult to grasp
  • #* 1619 , John Bainbridge, Astronomicall description of the late comet , 42
  • I hope this new Messenger from Heauen]] doth bring happie tidings of some munificent and liberall Patron... by whose gracious bountie the most recondite mysteries of this abstruse and [[divine, diuine science shall at length be manifested.
  • #* ante'' 1894 , (Robert Louis Stevenson), ''Amateur Emigrant (1895), 40
  • Humanly speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works upon recondite subjects.
  • # Esoteric, little known; secret
  • #* 1644 , John Bulwer, Chirologia: or The naturall language of the hand. Whereunto is added Chironomic or the Art of manuall rhetoricke , 137
  • There was in the man much learning, and that of the more inward & recondit , a great Antiquary, and one that had a certain large possession of Divine and Humane]] [[laws, Lawes.
  • #* 1722 , F. Lee, Epistolary Discourses , 41
  • The Apostle Paul had taken up many things out of these Recondite and Apocryphal Writings.
  • #* 1817 , (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Biographia Literaria , I. iii. 65
  • [Of Southey:] I look in vain for any writer who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources.
  • #* 1849 , (Herman Melville), Mardi: and A Voyage Thither , II. §67
  • But I beseech thee, wise Doxodox! instruct me in thy dialectics, that I may embrace thy more recondite lore.
  • #* 1921 , (Joseph Conrad), Secret Agent'', Preface in ''Works , VIII. page xvii
  • Suggestions for certain personages... came from various sources which... some reader may have recognized. They are not very recondite .
  • #* 1948 , (William Somerset Maugham), Catalina , xv. 83
  • He was never at a loss for a recondite allusion.
  • #* 1992 Autumn, American Scholar , 576/1
  • It was hardly foreordained that a poor orphan from darkest Brittany... working in the recondite realms of Semitic philology, should play such a role in his time.
  • #* 2004 , Alexander McCall Smith, Sunday Philosophy Club , xxi. 224
  • While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky [sic] nosers spoke the language of everyday life.
  • # (of writers) Deliberately obscure; employing abstruse or esoteric allusions or references
  • #* 1788 , Vicesimus Knox, Winter Evenings , II. v. i. 109
  • They afford a lesson to the modern metaphysical and recondite writers not to overvalue their works.
  • #* 1817 , (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Biographia literaria; or, Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions , II. xxii. 172
  • In the play of fancy, , to my feelings, is not always graceful and sometimes recondite .
  • #* 2004 Autumn, American Scholar , 129
  • The voices of recondite writers quoted at length, forgotten storytellers weaving narratives, obscure scholars savaging one another.
  • # (of scholars) Learnèd]], having mastery over one's field, including its esoteric [[minutiæ
  • #* 1836 , (Edward Bulwer-Lytton), "Sir Thomas Browne" in The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Sir Edward Lytton (1841), II, 41
  • It is delightful to see this recondite scholar — this contemplative and refining dreamer — in the centre of his happy nor unworthy household.
  • #* 1891 , George T. Ferris, The Great German Composers
  • [Of ]: Our musician rapidly became known far and wide throughout the musical centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer.
  • #* 1998 , , Art for Art's Sake & Literary Life , 1
  • Cousin's lectures take their initial cue from the weighty treatises of a remote, recondite thinker named (Immanuel Kant).
  • Hidden or removed from view
  • * 1649 , John Bulwer, Pathomyotomia , ii. ii. 108
  • The Eye is somewhat recondit betweene its Orbite.
  • * 1796 , (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Letters , I. 209
  • My recondite eye sits distent quaintly behind the flesh-hill, and looks as little as a tomtit's.
  • * 1823 , (Charles Lamb), Old Benchers in Elia , 190
  • The young urchins,... not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic.
  • * 1825 , Thomas Say, Say's Entomol. , Glossary, 28
  • Recondite , (aculeus) concealed within the abdomen, seldom exposed to view.
  • * 1857 , (Charles Dickens), Little Dorrit , §21
  • How such a man should suppose himself unwell without reason, you may think strange. But I have found nothing the matter with him. He may have some deep-seated recondite complaint. I can't say. I only say, that at present I have not found it out.
  • * 1887 , (Robert Louis Stevenson), "The Canoe Speaks" in Underwoods
  • ...following the recondite brook,
    Sudden upon this scene I look,
    And light with unfamiliar face
    On chaste Diana's bathing-place
  • * 2002 , Nick Tosches, In the Hand of Dante , 253
  • Silent calligraphy sounds that were like those of the sweet fluent water of a recondite stream.
  • Shy, avoiding notice (particularly human notice)
  • * 1835 , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society , 125, 361
  • Animals of this class are so recondite in their habits... so little known to naturalists beyond the more common species.

    Verb

    (recondit)
  • to hide, cover up, conceal
  • * 1578 , John Banister, The History of Man , i. f. 32
  • Tendons: recondited , and hidde in their Muscle, as if they were in a purse imposed.

    References

    * Oxford English Dictionary , 3rd ed. "recondite, adj." and "v." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2009. *

    Anagrams

    * ----