: known or knowable only to a few people : secret
arcane rites
an arcane ritual
Synonyms
Examples of arcane in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
What fascinated me was how Mr. Barreto represented himself in housing court, displaying knowledge of the city’s arcane rent laws.
—
Matthew Haag, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2024
Guests of these early parties had to show up with a presentation on the arcane subject of their choice, like the moral alignment of Sonic the Hedgehog character Shadow, per Buzzfeed News.
—Scottie Andrew, CNN, 25 Mar. 2024
Institutional memory is an important part of getting things done in our complex, often arcane legislative branch, which is one reason political scientists have largely found that congressional term limits are a bad idea.
—Nathaniel Rakich, ABC News, 25 Mar. 2024
One person arrived with a plan to grow cannabis, but left a few weeks later following an arcane dispute about decolonial theory and the writings of Frantz Fanon and Gerald Horne.
—David Peisner, Rolling Stone, 24 Mar. 2024
But arcane boundaries between the state’s community colleges, state universities and University of California system degree-granting capabilities have hampered the ability of our more affordable, more convenient community college campuses to give bachelor’s degrees.
—The Editorial Board, Orange County Register, 23 Mar. 2024
Now, several teams have explored the power of chain-of-thought reasoning by using techniques from an arcane branch of theoretical computer science called computational complexity theory.
—Ben Brubaker, Quanta Magazine, 21 Mar. 2024
When a member of Congress loses re-election and is trying to figure out what turned voters away, their position on an arcane bank regulation doesn't usually come up.
—Philip Elliott, TIME, 18 Mar. 2024
The corresponding legal designations are arcane, perhaps deliberately so.
—Rebecca Panovka, Harper's Magazine, 9 Feb. 2024
Matthew Haag, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2024
Guests of these early parties had to show up with a presentation on the arcane subject of their choice, like the moral alignment of Sonic the Hedgehog character Shadow, per Buzzfeed News.
—Scottie Andrew, CNN, 25 Mar. 2024
Institutional memory is an important part of getting things done in our complex, often arcane legislative branch, which is one reason political scientists have largely found that congressional term limits are a bad idea.
—Nathaniel Rakich, ABC News, 25 Mar. 2024
One person arrived with a plan to grow cannabis, but left a few weeks later following an arcane dispute about decolonial theory and the writings of Frantz Fanon and Gerald Horne.
—David Peisner, Rolling Stone, 24 Mar. 2024
But arcane boundaries between the state’s community colleges, state universities and University of California system degree-granting capabilities have hampered the ability of our more affordable, more convenient community college campuses to give bachelor’s degrees.
—The Editorial Board, Orange County Register, 23 Mar. 2024
Now, several teams have explored the power of chain-of-thought reasoning by using techniques from an arcane branch of theoretical computer science called computational complexity theory.
—Ben Brubaker, Quanta Magazine, 21 Mar. 2024
When a member of Congress loses re-election and is trying to figure out what turned voters away, their position on an arcane bank regulation doesn't usually come up.
—Philip Elliott, TIME, 18 Mar. 2024
The corresponding legal designations are arcane, perhaps deliberately so.
—Rebecca Panovka, Harper's Magazine, 9 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'arcane.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near arcane
Cite this Entry
“Arcane.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arcane. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
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