reconditeadj/ˈɹɛk(ə)nˌdaɪt/

• 1

  Difficult, obscure.

  • a recondite tractate on alchemy
  • But I hope this new Messenger from Heauen doth bring happie tidings of some munificent and liberall Patron to these rauishing (but impouerishing) studies, by whose gracious bountie the most recondite mysteries of this abstruse and diuine science [astronomy] shall at length be manifested.
• 2

  Difficult, obscure.

  • [T]here 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 Lawes.
  • [T]he Apoſtle Paul had taken up many things out of theſe Recondite and Apocryphal Writings.
• 3

  Difficult, obscure.

  • It is delightful to see this recondite scholar [Thomas Browne]—this contemplative and refining dreamer—in the centre of his happy nor unworthy household.
  • Our musician [Johann Sebastian Bach] rapidly became known far and wide throughout the musical centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer, as a brilliant improviser, and as an organist beyond rivalry.
• 4

  Difficult, obscure.

  • They afford a lesson to the modern metaphysical and recondite writers not to overvalue their works.
  • In the play of Fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful, and sometimes recondite.
• 5

  archaicHidden or removed from view.

  • 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.
• 6

  archaicobsoleterarebiologybotanyentomologyHidden or removed from view.

  • Recondite, (aculeus) concealed within the abdomen, seldom exposed to view.
• 7

  archaicrarebiologynatural-scienceszoologyHidden or removed from view.

  • Animals of this class are so recondite in their habits... so little known to naturalists beyond the more common species.

reconditenoun/ˈɹɛk(ə)nˌdaɪt/

• 1

  rareA recondite (hidden or obscure) person or thing.

  • [T]he Duchess, and the dandies, and the member's wife and all the rest of their tribulations, were happily hidden from the view by the towering bouquets of the gold plateau vases at the head of the room. [...] A contra-dance after supper was felt to be a national duty; but behind those fatal vases a plot had already been concocted by the recondites for rewarding their previous self-denial, not by a quadrille, but a galoppe.
  • Whether subsidence plunged the huge morass, / With vegetation, soil, and trees, en masse— / Or, if the flood had drown'd the boggy all, / As streaming torrents roar'd in surly bawl— / Let dons decide, on whom these points devolve; / Such recondites are truely hard to solve.
• 2

  rareA scholar or other person who is recondite, that is, who has mastery over his or her field, including its esoteric minutiae.

  • Here we have an uncommon acquaintance with the conditions of society in the mass, which, perhaps, some of our recondites would hardly be disposed to expect in the case of a man of a character so eminent and philosophical as [Dugald] Stewart, and addicted to studies removing him so far from the sphere of common mortals.
  • If the administrative economists should adopt the widespread practice of their pedagogue colleagues and express themselves, in major policy papers as elsewhere, in mathematical equations rather than words, administrative prerogative would be reinforced by recourse to the professional recondites. [...] This is a serious matter, since any obscurantism and any retreat from public accountability by the civil service cause distrust of people against their government, and of the legislative branch against the bureaucracy.

reconditeverb/ˈɹɛk(ə)nˌdaɪt/

• 1

  obsoleterareTo conceal, cover up, hide.

  • Tendons: recondited, and hidde in their Muscle, as if they were in a purse imposed.
  • Theſe Species are conveyed to the Brain by the Optick Nerve, and are laid up in the Magazine of the Memory, otherways we ſhould not remember the Object any longer than it is in our Preference; and a remembring of thoſe Objects is nothing elſe but the Fancy's reviewing, or more properly the Soul of Man by the Fancy reviewing of theſe intentional Species, formerly received from the viſible Object unto the Organ of the Eye, and recondited into the Seat of the Memory.