What's the difference between abstruse and arcane?

Abstruse


Definition:

  • (a.) Concealed or hidden out of the way.
  • (a.) Remote from apprehension; difficult to be comprehended or understood; recondite; as, abstruse learning.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ed Miliband should be out and proud about his abstruse interests, his Masters in economics, his political obsession, his prioritising of the mental over the physical.
  • (2) Britain's sodden fields mean the debate about climate change is now no longer confined to some abstruse problem affecting glaciers in far-off countries.
  • (3) As if to underline how far leftfield Radiohead have subsequently shifted, it's followed by the instrumental Feral, which in its live incarnation – scattered rhythms overlaid with echoing vocal loops and waves of electronic noise – is arguably the most abstruse and uncommercial piece of music you're ever likely to hear booming around an arena venue.
  • (4) At its best, British public service broadcasting wants to share the best with everyone, it takes topics or themes which may seem abstruse or unapproachable – the science of the solar system, what you can learn about civilisation through physical artefacts – and then brings them to life with such conviction and creativity that they reach deep across a society.
  • (5) Thus the abstruse nomenclature in common use is avoided.
  • (6) Innovative dance music is still being made, but it exists almost entirely out of the realm of the charts: for all its ground-breaking brilliance, there have been few takers among the mainstream record-buyers for the new, deliberately abstruse, genre of "grime".
  • (7) I think the most abstruse one we've put in here is ferkidoodle."
  • (8) The lawyer among them, the ever resourceful Markus C Kerber, probably came up with the abstruse idea of supporting their case by quoting the right to resistance.
  • (9) Filesharing tools have gone from the primitive, easily monitored and abstruse (IRC or the early Napster) to a very easy, attack-resistant architecture that was built in response to entertainment industry attacks.
  • (10) Or perhaps it's just a load of bumwash with wilfully abstruse bells on.
  • (11) In a less abstruse way, Twitter has already shown itself to be a useful conduit for circumventing legal or governmental censorship.
  • (12) The origins of this type of aberrant maternal behavior remain abstruse, as do the long-term psychological effects on the child victims.
  • (13) Shenouda's hundred books and countless sermons untangled abstruse dogma in a straightforward way.
  • (14) If it sounds a little abstruse, by the way, to try to solve the feminist framing of the ancient Greeks, the idea of a sex strike has reappeared more recently, in fiction if not in fact.
  • (15) For the lay person attempting to referee the row, and having to interpret such abstruse concepts as the Gini coefficient and, as Gaffney neatly summarises, whether "the r > g inequality is amplifying the reconcentration trend", illumination is hard to discern.
  • (16) For children about to undergo surgery and for their families, anxiety caused by the abstruse procedure and the child's separation can provoke a crisis.
  • (17) Whereas the effects of Fadenoperation on adduction incomitance are perfectly clear, those on the deviation in primary position still remain very abstruse.
  • (18) This manuscript is concerned with concepts rather than abstruse details or mathematics.
  • (19) Model theory is a branch of mathematics that treats such abstruse questions as "is there another number system, different from 0,1,2, ... that satisfies all the axioms of arithmetic?"

Arcane


Definition:

  • (a.) Hidden; secret.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Pointing out that “the army has its own fortune teller”, he sounds less than happy at the state of affairs: “The country is run by superstition.” Weerasethakul is in a relatively fortunate position, in that his arcane films are not exactly populist and don’t depend on the mainstream Thai film industry for funding, but he has become cast as a significant voice of dissent in a difficult time .
  • (2) The arcane nature of physics calls for some imagination when it comes to naming particles.
  • (3) Arcane though names such as Ro, La, Sm and Jo-1 may appear, much is now known about the intracellular targets of the antibodies; most are enzymes or particles active in DNA replication and the synthesis of RNA and protein.
  • (4) Milk texture talk quickly becomes arcane, with terms like frothing, stretching and the all-important microfoam.
  • (5) The arcane wiring when electricity came along, the subsequent clumsy rewiring; the cheap flat conversion in the 1960s; the constant saga of patch and mend from occupants who never have the money or vision to remake the whole thing from scratch - all this, and more, was paralleled on the WCML on an enormous scale.
  • (6) This partly explains the higher infection rate among Maasai livestock but the low human infection rate remains arcane and requires further study.
  • (7) "But the danger always is that the debate becomes very quickly polarised between one side which says this is the moment to rush headlong towards further integration, new treaties, new intergovernmental conferences, new arcane debates about EU powers, and another side that says this is the moment to unravel the whole thing.
  • (8) It's partly to do with the fact that kids are more sophisticated, especially linguistically, then they used to be, so to do a show that is clever and funny and uses arcane references but can play to adults and children is more possible now.
  • (9) Furthermore, it emphasizes method rather than arcane knowledge and illustrates the approaches to problems and the kinds of thinking that a liberal education should cultivate: the scientific method, analogic thinking, deductive reasoning, problem solving within constraints, and concern for aesthetic values.
  • (10) With his moral authority and charisma, the pope has helped reframe climate change from an arcane set of negotiations into an issue with sweeping moral implications.
  • (11) Even if some unease about the hiving off of public services prevails, maybe all those acronyms and contractual complexities made it too arcane to compete with broad brush concerns like equality and climate change.
  • (12) Nothing is too odd, too arcane, or too outre (I’ve not researched the tie-in adult sex-toy angle, but I’ll bet there is one) to have the Star Wars logo plastered across it.
  • (13) But while she has set herself such arcane formal constraints, much of the novel's appeal lies in the fact that it is a compulsive thriller.
  • (14) This is not some arcane dry and dusty subject,” Cameron said at his closing press conference.
  • (15) Among the problems in this area have been the lack of a theoretical base for taxonomic categories of behavior, overlapping categories, the arcane nature of many disciplinary taxonomies, and lack of rigorous operational definitions for measurements.
  • (16) Even more esoterically, it ran a specialist indie page: this when “indie” didn’t mean Oasis filling stadiums and the Arctic Monkeys breaking sales records, but music of an unbelievably arcane stripe.
  • (17) The immediate focus of the dispute is an arcane point of law.
  • (18) Partly inspired by the soundtracks to arcane horror movies, it's a meticulously constructed, cinematic work that moves from eerie paranoia to tentative optimism, painting vivid mental pictures as it goes.
  • (19) ARCANE's referential is based on conceptual slicing close to SNOMED's.
  • (20) Flash Boys follows the usual Lewis formula: find a scandalous situation that is too arcane for most people to comprehend; locate some smart guys (they are usually male) who have spotted the scam and plan to do something with or about it; and tell their story.