arcane

Borrowed from Latin arcānus (“hidden, secret”), from arceō (“to shut up, enclose”); cognate with Latin arca (“a chest”).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɑɹˈkeɪn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪn

arcane (comparative more arcane, superlative most arcane)

1. Understood by only a few.

   Synonym: esoteric

   Antonym: mundane

   arcane rituals

   arcane knowledge

2. (by extension) Obscure, mysterious.

   Synonyms: enigmatic, esoteric, recondite, clandestine

   arcane origins

   arcane details

3. Requiring secret or mysterious knowledge to understand.
   • 1997: Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 67, The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; →ISBN

     A “signature” was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane knowledge. Knowing was guessing and interpreting, not observing or demonstrating.

4. Extremely old (e.g. interpretation or knowledge), and possibly irrelevant.

   an arcane law

• “arcane”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “arcane”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “arcane”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• carane

• IPA^(key): /aʁ.kan/

• Audio:

  (file)

arcane (plural arcanes)

1. (dated) arcane, secret, mysterious

arcane m (plural arcanes)

1. (chiefly in the plural) mysteries, arcanum

• “arcane”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

arcane

1. feminine plural of arcano

• Aracne, Carena, aracne, arance, carena, carnea, rancea

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [arˈkaː.nɛ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [arˈkaː.ne]

arcāne

1. vocative masculine singular of arcānus

• ancrae