Monday, April 16, 2007

I found a new word

I came across a word I hadn't seen before: recondite. So I looked it up. It means concealed or not understandable to the person of ordinary knowledge or understanding. I guess that makes it a self-descriptive word, in the same family as "pentasyllabic." Unless, of course, I'm a person of extraordinarily poor knowledge and understanding, which is certainly possible. (After all, how would I know?)

I think we need a verb form of recondite. It comes from the Latin verb recondere, which suggests the English verb form "to recond," as in to make obscure except to the Mensa and academic audiences. It'd imply intent, so you could complain about someone who likes to recond his papers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You might also like the word "onomotopaeia" . :-)