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abstruse
in a sentence

show 42 more with this conextual meaning
  • She was fond of investigating abstruse scientific questions.   (source)
  • They have fallen into the gross but common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse.   (source)
  • ...said Sam, with the air of one entering into an abstruse subject,   (source)
  • But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved.   (source)
  • The young man abandoned it after a few tries, saying it was too abstruse.†   (source)
  • Even the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California described the field in arcane and abstruse language, defining it as the study of mankind's "direct and immediate access to knowledge beyond what is available to our normal senses and the power of reason."†   (source)
  • And from the joining of two of these abstruse cracks, a thin spill of sand was running, as if something on the other side was digging itself through with slobbering, agonized intensity.†   (source)
  • Very abstract, abstruse, or subtle: often used derogatorily of reasoning.†   (source)
  • Even while he is talking to us some abstruse point in the classics is occupying his mind.   (source)
  • The resultant contradictions prevent higher level abstractions from being made and rationalizations for beliefs held thus becoming increasingly abstruse and attenuated.   (source)
  • Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere.   (source)
  • But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved.   (source)
  • She understands abstruse issues of computer security.
  • She wanted a bottom-line answer without the abstruse analysis.
  • Besides, in our day, the very ABC has become a science greatly too abstruse to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter.   (source)
  • MARTHA: ABSTRUSE!†   (source)
  • As he made his way down the streets assigned to him he could talk with people or fall away into the abstruse speculations of a soul turned inward, whichever he pleased.†   (source)
  • Religion declines, and patriotism; law and justice become abstruse questions of metaphysics; the younger generation grows dangerous and irrational, shameless, selfish, anarchistic.†   (source)
  • He could quote things at great length (there was no way for them to know whether he was really quoting or inventing) and he had an uncanny ability to turn any trifling remark into an abstruse speculation wherein things that were plain as day to common sense became ominous, uncertain, and formidable, like buttresses of ruined cities discovered in deep shadow at the bottom of a blue inland sea.†   (source)
  • He was like a mathematician with an abstruse problem--worrying over it, but worrying very calmly and impersonally.†   (source)
  • Conway, during a rapid glance at some of the shelves, found much to astonish him; the world's best literature was there, it seemed, as well as a great deal of abstruse and curious stuff that he could not appraise.†   (source)
  • Is it to discuss abstruse questions of political economy?†   (source)
  • Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater.†   (source)
  • He had read a great deal, chiefly delighting in books which were unusual; and he poured forth his stores of abstruse knowledge with childlike enjoyment of the amazement of his hearers.†   (source)
  • …drawling accent, to an immobile audience of Berghof residents and for which he always wore a frock coat and sandals, no longer dealt with masked forms of love in action or the transformation of illness back into conscious emotion, but with the abstruse oddities of hypnotism and somnambulism, the phenomena of telepathy, prophetic dreams, and second sight, the wonders of hysteria; and as he discussed these topics, philosophic horizons expanded until suddenly his audience beheld great…†   (source)
  • Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no, there is nothing to indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses.†   (source)
  • Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's comprehension, rather than that she had nothing to say.†   (source)
  • When she returned she brought her prayer-book with her, and her uncle the Dean's famous book of sermons, out of which she never failed to read every Sabbath; not understanding all, haply, not pronouncing many of the words aright, which were long and abstruse—for the Dean was a learned man, and loved long Latin words—but with great gravity, vast emphasis, and with tolerable correctness in the main.†   (source)
  • In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension.†   (source)
  • The most abstruse, the most far-reaching, perhaps the most chastened of the poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination as he gazes into the depths of the illimitable void.†   (source)
  • The consequence of this desultory kind of priesthood was, as we have already intimated, a great diversity of opinion on the more abstruse points of faith.†   (source)
  • This she read steadily, from beginning to end, in a sweet, low and plaintive voice; hoping devoutly that the allegorical and abstruse sentences might convey to the heart of the sufferer the consolation he needed.†   (source)
  • Indeed upon any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault?†   (source)
  • In this abstruse pursuit; in making an account for Peggotty, of all the property into which she had come; in arranging all the affairs in an orderly manner; and in being her referee and adviser on every point, to our joint delight; I passed the week before the funeral.†   (source)
  • These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a cipher—that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs.†   (source)
  • But, though stimulated by mental excitement and wine, two hours of abstruse logic were thrown away on this subject; for he declined their advice, with a pertinacity truly astonishing in so polite a man.†   (source)
  • Others, whose briefer span forbade their devoting themselves to studies so abstruse, beguiled the little tedium of the way with penny-papers.†   (source)
  • studious thoughts abstruse   (source)
  • The theory behind it is so inordinately abstruse that the Fowlers, in "The King's English,"[29] require 20 pages to explain it, and even then they come to the resigned conclusion that the task is hopeless.†   (source)
  • And this is incident to none but those, that converse in questions of matters incomprehensible, as the Schoole-men; or in questions of abstruse Philosophy.†   (source)
  • The objects of geometrical inquiry are so entirely abstracted from those pursuits which stir up and put in motion the unruly passions of the human heart, that mankind, without difficulty, adopt not only the more simple theorems of the science, but even those abstruse paradoxes which, however they may appear susceptible of demonstration, are at variance with the natural conceptions which the mind, without the aid of philosophy, would be led to entertain upon the subject.†   (source)
  • Mean while the Eternal eye, whose sight discerns Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount, And from within the golden lamps that burn Nightly before him, saw without their light Rebellion rising; saw in whom, how spread Among the sons of morn, what multitudes Were banded to oppose his high decree; And, smiling, to his only Son thus said.†   (source)
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