What's the difference between esoteric and strange?

Esoteric


Definition:

  • (a.) 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.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Underlying many criticisms of medical ethics is the failure to realize that medical ethics as such is not a reform movement or an effort to inspire moral behavior, that it is not and cannot be a specialist's body of esoteric knowledge, that it requires facts and conceptual analyses from other fields to do its work, and that value arguments can be carried farther than one generally expects.
  • (2) Our current understanding of these disease processes is discussed in an effort to review the current status of both the mundane and the esoteric infections of the kidney.
  • (3) The soundtrack is supplied by vinyl rotating on vintage record players, a gumball machine dispenses yellow, black and white gobstoppers, and the room is surveilled by the beady eyes of esoteric taxidermy that includes a peacock in full plume and a splendid Himalayan wild goat grazing among the soft seating.
  • (4) Bush's fantastical lyrics, influenced by children's literature, esoteric mystical knowledge, daydreams and the lore and legends of old Albion, seemed irrelevant, and deficient in street-cred at a time of tower-block social realism and agit-prop.
  • (5) Despite a slightly esoteric focus on the importance of adobe housing, House of Earth also includes graphic sex, including "a scorching lovemaking scene on a hay bale".
  • (6) From small and relatively esoteric fields 15 or 20 years ago, both have grown enormously.
  • (7) She reels off esoteric book recommendations ("I just devoured this great book about the mistaken theories of pre-historic sexuality.
  • (8) It is seen as the province of an elite, using obscure language and esoteric skills with no obvious connection with the world of nursing; in particular, it involves statistics.
  • (9) Whatever else may be happening in music, they doggedly pursue their own esoteric fascinations and Tomorrow's Harvest is their most haunting album yet.
  • (10) The curative use of opaque, esoteric formulae is widely reported; Tobelo also have a specialized speech I call 'neo-Ternatese' used for this purpose.
  • (11) A medicolegal autopsy protocol must serve as something more than an esoteric scientific document.
  • (12) In a field dominated by big brains and even bigger egos, each mining their own esoteric field, Markram's big data approach to experimental neuroscience represents a cultural revolution.
  • (13) Far from being some bizarre esoteric theory, intersectionality is alive and kicking all around us, and not just in exclusive ivory tower gender studies clubs.
  • (14) No longer do image macros and hashtags exist merely as esoteric in-jokes to amuse bored teenagers and social media managers.
  • (15) It may also be used to meet the sometimes esoteric needs of the researcher, the unique needs of the teacher, or the preferential needs of other individual recorders.
  • (16) The heirs - directly or indirectly - to an esoteric "moslem" knowledge which has been transmitted since the XVth century by the aristocratic islamized groups, the medicine-men are also the possessors of a knowledge which has been acquired by the autochthonous groups, that are said "masters of the earth" (commoners).
  • (17) Perhaps the church perceived these women, with their special, often esoteric, healing skills, as a threat to its supremacy in the lives of its parishioners.
  • (18) Finally, contrary to widespread opinion, few candidates fail on the basis of poor answers to what have been described as more esoteric questions.
  • (19) The group is thought to overlap with neo-Nazis, adherents of conspiracy theories and other esoteric beliefs.
  • (20) Investments, whether in stocks and shares, property or in more esoteric assets like commodities, are another matter.

Strange


Definition:

  • (superl.) Belonging to another country; foreign.
  • (superl.) Of or pertaining to others; not one's own; not pertaining to one's self; not domestic.
  • (superl.) Not before known, heard, or seen; new.
  • (superl.) Not according to the common way; novel; odd; unusual; irregular; extraordinary; unnatural; queer.
  • (superl.) Reserved; distant in deportment.
  • (superl.) Backward; slow.
  • (superl.) Not familiar; unaccustomed; inexperienced.
  • (adv.) Strangely.
  • (v. t.) To alienate; to estrange.
  • (v. i.) To be estranged or alienated.
  • (v. i.) To wonder; to be astonished.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We knew it would be a strange match because they had to come out and play to win to finish third,” Benitez said afterwards.
  • (2) After friends heard that he was on them, Brumfield started observing something strange: “If we had people over to the Super Bowl or a holiday season party, I’d notice that my medicines would come up short, no matter how good friends they were.” Twice people broke into his house to get to the drugs.
  • (3) However, growing accustomed to “this strange atmosphere”, the Observer man became dazzled by Burgess’s “brilliance and charm”.
  • (4) Nonetheless some strange theories have been floated.
  • (5) The effect on milk yield, milk leucocyte concentration, and milk prolactin of dominance rank and introduction of "strange" cows into a group was studied.
  • (6) Perhaps strangely, it was the second remark that troubled me more than the possibility that humanity would be extinguished by my hand.
  • (7) "When I look at a lot of other bands, it does seem that we're the strange minority," says drummer, Jeremy Gara, who, with his standy-up hair and dishevelled clothes, seems the most old-school indie musician of them all.
  • (8) Britons certainly divided over that strange, heady Diana week in 1997 and again over how to mark the millennium.
  • (9) Having always voted Conservative, he says that Labour's increasing doubts about HS2 suggest that they may be more deserving of his vote, something that clearly feels very strange indeed.
  • (10) When you ask for the phone numbers or names or addresses they are, strangely, unavailable."
  • (11) The banalities of a news conference take on a strange significance when the men who summon the world's cameras are members of a feared insurgent group that banned television when they ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al-Qaida.
  • (12) Training grounds during a World Cup turn out to be a strange little bubble of a world.
  • (13) I was an immigrant, although a reluctant one, and I was living in a huge strange country that resembled the America I'd encountered in books and in films so much less than I had expected.
  • (14) When female voles were allowed contact with the stud male for only 1 h at the time of mating, 55% exhibited pregnancy failure when exposed to a strange male 48 h later.
  • (15) As Nelson Mandela lay in the open casket , his features both familiar and strange, a crisply suited Robert Mugabe gazed down at him through his dark glasses for a long, still, silent moment.
  • (16) When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white... Further - and this is a stroke of his sensitive, pawky genius - he contemplates his momentarily displaced furniture and the nuance of enchanting strangeness: It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories ...
  • (17) 12.24am BST The Labor leader has seen the decision by the Greens to back in Tony Abbott in reintroducing fuel tax indexation in this budget, but strangely he has not seen their decision to oppose the deficit tax, even though it was announced at the same time.
  • (18) Strange in that Chomsky's interview was given to the state-owned news agency at about the same time as another arm of the Russian state despatched two Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bombers for a cheeky incursion into the Nato-protected zone off Scotland's north coast .
  • (19) To explain these contentions, the history, strengths, and limits of reductionist thinking are discussed, and aspects of chaos science, such as the butterfly effect and strange attractors, are described.
  • (20) Strangely enough, we continue to endure retrograde policy approaches that are more likely to further entrench a sense of disempowerment among Aboriginal people, rather than acknowledge and enable individual empowerment.