5 definitions found
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Esoteric \Es`o*ter"ic\, a.
Marked by secrecy or privacy; private; select; confidential;
as an esoteric purpose; an esoteric meeting.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Esoteric \Es`o*ter"ic\, n. (Philos.)
a An esoteric doctrine or treatise; esoteric philosophy;
esoterics.
b One who believes, or is an initiate, in esoteric
doctrines or rites.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Esoteric \Es`o*ter"ic\ ([e^]s`[-o]*t[e^]"[i^]k), a. [Gr.
'eswteriko`s, fr 'esw`teros inner, interior, comp. fr 'e`sw
in within, fr 'es, e'is, into fr 'en in See {In}.]
Designed for and understood by the specially initiated
alone; not communicated, or not intelligible, to the general
body of followers; private; interior; acroamatic; -- said of
the private and more recondite instructions and doctrines of
philosophers. Opposed to exoteric.
Enough if every age produce two or three critics of
this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to
understand them --De Quincey.
From WordNet r 1.6 [wn]:
esoteric
adj : confined to and understandable by only an enlightened inner
circle; "a compilation of esoteric philosophical
theories" [ant: {exoteric}]
From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:
ESOTERIC, adj Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult.
The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, -- _exoteric_, those that
the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and _esoteric_,
those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most
profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in
our time.
more about esoteric
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