But we must not leap to the conclusion that, taking the language as a whole, the simple, easy word is sure to be native, the abstruse word classic.

In questions of an abstruse and complicated nature, it is certain, sir, that experience has taught us what could never have been discovered previously by the wisdom of our ancestors; and we have found, by their consequences, the impropriety of many practices which they approved, and which we should have equally applauded in the same circumstances.

He had opinions gathered at first hand from influential minds of every land and creed to contribute to the talk when it flowed in narrowing channels; and he himself came thither for refreshment from abstruse studies, out of a quiet cell in the convent of the Servi, while seemingly unaware that many a stranger begged for an invitation to the palazzo Morosini in the hope of an introduction to this "miracle of Venice.

"We were hoping for something abstruse and telepathic.

He was familiar with the ancient poets and historians and philosophers; he was still better acquainted with the abstruse speculations of the schoolmen.

The rising universities had gifted scholars whose abstruse speculations have never been rivalled for acuteness and severity of logic.

He is wonderfully taken with abstruse knowledge, and had rather handle truth with a pair of tongs wrapped up in mysteries and hieroglyphics than touch it with his hands or see it plainly demonstrated to his senses.

It is for nobody's use; it is too popular and trivial for the learned, and too abstruse and plodding for the multitude.

No doubt he would decide that the margin had been left for the purpose of making notes,making notes on those abstruse rose-petals of boyish song!

Has not Vergil himself referred to the Aetna in the preface of his Ciris, where he thanks the Muses for their aid in an abstruse poem (l. 93)?

[Footnote 10: Lucretius is very fond of using the word caecus with reference to abstruse and obscure philosophical and scientific subjects.]

As a Man must have no slavish Fears and Apprehensions hanging upon his Mind, [who ] will indulge the Flights of Fancy or Speculation, and push his Researches into all the abstruse Corners of Truth, so it is necessary for him to have about him a Competency of all the Conveniencies of Life.

It is one of the great Beauties of Poetry, to make hard things intelligible, and to deliver what is abstruse [of ] it self in such easy Language as may be understood by ordinary Readers:

He has represented all the abstruse Doctrines of Predestination, Free-Will and Grace, as also the great Points of Incarnation and Redemption, (which naturally grow up in a Poem that treats of the Fall of Man) with great Energy of Expression, and in a clearer and stronger Light than I ever met with in any other Writer.

As with St. Paul, his theology, however seemingly abstruse, always results in some lesson of plain practical morality.

Ralph, in the first months of their marriage, had been eloquent too, had even gone the length of quoting poetry; but he disconcerted her by his baffling twists and strange allusions (she always scented ridicule in the unknown), and the poets he quoted were esoteric and abstruse.

The second volume was more abstruse and deeper in feeling, and comparatively few of Mr. Ruskin's followers through the first cared to get entangled in the metaphysical mazes of the second, and it is generally neglected, although containing some of the deepest and most satisfactory studies on the fundamental principles of art and taste which have ever been printed.

But how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally unfashionable and abstruse (though not unimportant) problem of the day!

The subject is a subtle and abstruse one.

It is one thing to delve into subtleties by one's self with pen in hand, or to study out abstruse points in books, but quite another thing to make a popular lecture out of them.

"The processes of thought," of which I spoke, are not "all processes," but the processes involved in the abstruse inquiries to which I had referred.

Some of these were men of wide and abstruse learning; quaint and eccentric scholars both in habit and look, students of the ancient type, who even fifty years ago seemed out of date to their generation.

It is just the same, too, in learning to think about abstruse subjects.

She is the most learned woman in France; her house is the resort of all men of literature, with whom she converses upon the most abstruse subjects.

"I can't be abstruse tonight.

Half-witted people, only, will suppose I mean grate, for the most obtuse nincompoop must know that anybody can become a grate man by going into the stove business; but to develop yourself into a real bonâ-fide great man, like GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN or DANIEL PRATT, requires much study and a persistent effort.

Pinnæ sub-opposite, divergent, narrowly oblong, obtuse; base truncate, cordate or clasping, occasionally auricled; lower pinnæ often with orbicular or cordate pinnules.

PARSLEY FERN Cryptográmma acrostichòides Sterile and fertile fronds very dissimilar; segments of the fertile, linear and pod-like; of the sterile, ovate-oblong, obtuse, and toothed.

Pinnæ oblong-ovate, obtuse, incised or pinnátifid into oblong, toothed lobes.

RUBÉLLUM has the sori distinct even when mature; its pinnules stand at a wide angle from the rachis of the pinna and are strongly toothed or pinnatifid with obtuse teeth.

Lobes oblong, obtuse, minutely toothed, each bearing two rows of oblong or linear fruit-dots.

Lobes obtuse, but appear acute when their margins are reflexed over the sori.

Segments oblong, obtuse, entire or toothed.

Pinnæ lanceolate, acuminate, the lowest pair deflexed and standing forward; cut into oblong, obtuse segments.

Pinnules oblong, obtuse, serrate at the apex, obscurely so at the sides, the basal incisely lobed, distant, the upper confluent.

Divisions oblong, obtuse, finely serrate or cut-toothed, those nearest the rachis sometimes separate.

Obtuse Woodsia.

Pinnæ triangular-ovate, obtuse, lobed, the lobes few and nearly entire.

Pinnæ rather remote, triangular-ovate or oblong, pinnately parted into obtuse, oblong, toothed segments.

Pinnæ remote at the base, roundish-ovate, very obtuse with a few crenate lobes.

Pinnse triangular-oblong, obtuse, pinnatifid.

Segments ovate or oblong, obtuse, crenate, the teeth or margin nearly always reflexed.

Like the obtuse Woodsia this fern has no joint near the base of the stipe, but is much smaller and has several points of difference.

Primary pinnæ in outline like the frond; the secondary, pinnatifid into oblong and obtuse, cut-toothed lobes.

Pinnæ cut into oblong, obtuse lobes.

Pinnæ lanceolate, pinnatifid with oblong, obtuse divisions.

Ultimate segments more obtuse than in type; has but very slight tendency towards the spatulate form of the two previous varieties.

From two to four times longer than broad and with sides nearly parallel. OBTUSE.

BARTRAM, the lime-burner, an obtuse, middle-aged clown in Ethan Brand by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

And underneath that servile gentleness of hers lay an intelligence even more obtuse than her father's, a mind filled with nothing but piety and the religious phrases in which she had been educated.