Word a Day
abstruse
What does abstruse mean?
abstruse (adjective): difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge.
Definition: Princeton WordNet 3.1.
How do you use abstruse in a sentence?
- The professor's lectures were so abstruse that students tended to avoid them. (Princeton WordNet 3.1)
How do you pronounce abstruse?
/əbˈstɹus/ (IPA, American English). The app reads every word aloud.
Where does abstruse come from?
Learned borrowing from Latin abstrūsus (“concealed, hidden; having been concealed”), an adjective use of the perfect passive participle of abstrūdō (“to conceal, hide; to push or thrust away”).
Etymology: Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Test yourself: do you know “abstruse”?
Tap an answer to check it. The same questions the app asks.
What does “abstruse” mean?
having a dry, harsh tone to the voice, as a result of a sore throat, age, emotion, etc
Not quite: that's what hoarse means.
blindly and obstinately attached to some creed or opinion and intolerant toward others
Not quite: that's what bigoted means.
difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge
Right! That's what “abstruse” means.
closest in degree or order (space or time) especially in a chain of causes and effects
Not quite: that's what proximate means.
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