Secret vs Recondite - What's the difference?
secret | recondite |
(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= * Rambler
(uncountable) Something not understood or known.
* Milton
(archaic, in the plural) The genital organs.
Being or kept hidden.
* Bible, Deuteronomy xxix. 29
* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
, title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=1 (obsolete) Withdrawn from general intercourse or notice; in retirement or secrecy; secluded.
* Fenton
(obsolete) Faithful to a secret; not inclined to divulge or betray confidence; secretive.
* Shakespeare
(obsolete) Separate; distinct.
* Cudworth
To make or keep secret.
* 1984 , Peter Scott Lawrence,
* 1986 ,
* 1994 , Phyllis Granoff & Koichi Shinohara,
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. To keep secret. [Obs. ''Bacon .
(of areas of study and literature) Difficult, obscure; particularly:
# Abstruse, profound, difficult to grasp
#* 1619 , John Bainbridge, Astronomicall description of the late comet , 42
#* ante'' 1894 , (Robert Louis Stevenson), ''Amateur Emigrant (1895), 40
# 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
#* 1722 , F. Lee, Epistolary Discourses , 41
#* 1817 , (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Biographia Literaria , I. iii. 65
#* 1849 , (Herman Melville), Mardi: and A Voyage Thither , II. §67
#* 1921 , (Joseph Conrad), Secret Agent'', Preface in ''Works , VIII. page xvii
#* 1948 , (William Somerset Maugham), Catalina , xv. 83
#* 1992 Autumn, American Scholar , 576/1
#* 2004 , Alexander McCall Smith, Sunday Philosophy Club , xxi. 224
# (of writers) Deliberately obscure; employing abstruse or esoteric allusions or references
#* 1788 , Vicesimus Knox, Winter Evenings , II. v. i. 109
#* 1817 , (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Biographia literaria; or, Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions , II. xxii. 172
#* 2004 Autumn, American Scholar , 129
# (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),
#* 1891 , George T. Ferris, The Great German Composers
#* 1998 , , Art for Art's Sake & Literary Life ,
Hidden or removed from view
* 1649 , John Bulwer, Pathomyotomia , ii. ii. 108
* 1796 , (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Letters , I. 209
* 1823 , (Charles Lamb), Old Benchers in Elia , 190
* 1825 , Thomas Say, Say's Entomol. , Glossary, 28
* 1857 , (Charles Dickens), Little Dorrit , §21
* 1887 , (Robert Louis Stevenson), "The Canoe Speaks" in Underwoods
* 2002 , Nick Tosches, In the Hand of Dante , 253
Shy, avoiding notice (particularly human notice)
* 1835 , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society , 125, 361
to hide, cover up, conceal
* 1578 , John Banister, The History of Man , i. f. 32
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
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.}}
- To tell our secrets is often folly; to communicate those of others is treachery.
- All secrets of the deep, all nature's works.
Synonyms
* (l)Derived terms
* family secret * in secret * keep secret * open secret * Oxford secret * secretist * state secret * top secret * trade secret * Victoria's SecretAdjective
(en adjective)- The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us.
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.}}
- secret in her sapphire cell
- Secret Romans, that have spoke the word, / And will not palter.
- They suppose two other divine hypostases superior thereunto, which were perfectly secret from matter.
Alternative forms
* secrette (obsolete)Synonyms
* private * dern * confidential * concealedAntonyms
* overtDerived terms
* secret admirer * secret agent * secret ballot * secret code * secret partner * secret police * * secret Santa * secret service * secret society * secret writing * secretive * secretly * secretness * unsecretVerb
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.
InfoWorld, InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
- Diskless workstations [...] make it difficult for individuals to copy information [...] onto a diskette and secret it away.
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
* secreteReferences
* “†?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)- 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.
- Humanly speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works upon recondite subjects.
- 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.
- The Apostle Paul had taken up many things out of these Recondite and Apocryphal Writings.
- [Of Southey:] I look in vain for any writer who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources.
- But I beseech thee, wise Doxodox! instruct me in thy dialectics, that I may embrace thy more recondite lore.
- Suggestions for certain personages... came from various sources which... some reader may have recognized. They are not very recondite .
- He was never at a loss for a recondite allusion.
- 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.
- While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky [sic] nosers spoke the language of everyday life.
- They afford a lesson to the modern metaphysical and recondite writers not to overvalue their works.
- In the play of fancy, , to my feelings, is not always graceful and sometimes recondite .
- The voices of recondite writers quoted at length, forgotten storytellers weaving narratives, obscure scholars savaging one another.
II, 41
- It is delightful to see this recondite scholar — this contemplative and refining dreamer — in the centre of his happy nor unworthy household.
- [Of
] : Our musician rapidly became known far and wide throughout the musical centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer.
1
- Cousin's lectures take their initial cue from the weighty treatises of a remote, recondite thinker named (Immanuel Kant).
- The Eye is somewhat recondit betweene its Orbite.
- My recondite eye sits distent quaintly behind the flesh-hill, and looks as little as a tomtit's.
- The young urchins,... not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic.
- Recondite , (aculeus) concealed within the abdomen, seldom exposed to view.
- 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.
- ...following the recondite brook,
- Sudden upon this scene I look,
- And light with unfamiliar face
- On chaste Diana's bathing-place
- Silent calligraphy sounds that were like those of the sweet fluent water of a recondite stream.
- Animals of this class are so recondite in their habits... so little known to naturalists beyond the more common species.
Verb
(recondit)- Tendons: recondited , and hidde in their Muscle, as if they were in a purse imposed.