variants
also hermetical
as in esoteric
difficult for one of ordinary knowledge or intelligence to understand
wrote hermetic poetry whose sole intended readership was himself
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Recent Examples of hermetic
The filmmaker instead evokes his earlier work—namely Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer—combining the mannered, hermetic bleakness of those tales with the befuddled existentialism of a Samuel Beckett play.
—
Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 31 Oct. 2025
Despite appearances to the contrary—the swirling sentences, the feverish intellection—there is nothing hermetic about Krasznahorkai’s work, both old and new, which squarely faces contemporary European reality and its perils, including the tortured dynamics of settlement, movement, and identity.
—James Wood, New Yorker, 10 Oct. 2025
But even in their most hermetic iterations, these stories carry with them the weight of an incredibly tumultuous quarter-century.
—Paul A. Thompson, Pitchfork, 17 Apr. 2025
The reading room is hermetic, restrained—the only sounds inside are whispered checkout requests and the fluttering of old pages.
—Arati Menon, Condé Nast Traveler, 17 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for hermetic
Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 31 Oct. 2025
Despite appearances to the contrary—the swirling sentences, the feverish intellection—there is nothing hermetic about Krasznahorkai’s work, both old and new, which squarely faces contemporary European reality and its perils, including the tortured dynamics of settlement, movement, and identity.
—James Wood, New Yorker, 10 Oct. 2025
But even in their most hermetic iterations, these stories carry with them the weight of an incredibly tumultuous quarter-century.
—Paul A. Thompson, Pitchfork, 17 Apr. 2025
The reading room is hermetic, restrained—the only sounds inside are whispered checkout requests and the fluttering of old pages.
—Arati Menon, Condé Nast Traveler, 17 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for hermetic
Recent Examples of Synonyms for hermetic
Adjective
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Meanwhile, there’s a war on (Timothée Chalamet versus the esoteric performing arts) and the United States has made yet another military incursion into the Middle East.—
Vulture Editors,
Vulture,
15 Mar. 2026
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At the conference, there were several talks each day that delved into esoteric topics, such as gravitational wave physics, that would later dominate the field.—
Scott Neuman,
NPR,
9 Mar. 2026
Adjective
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No matter how firmly the film tries to grab hold of you and offer something profound amidst the absurdity of the situation, any such meaning eventually slips through the dwindling number of fingers that the film, as well as its characters, have left.—
Chase Hutchinson,
IndieWire,
19 Mar. 2026
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With powerful visual storytelling, the film will interweave the rigorous scientific research and poetry of Lucy’s writing, with personal stories from a diverse range of contributors to offer a radical and profound examination of maternal metamorphosis.—
Georg Szalai,
HollywoodReporter,
19 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Hermetic.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hermetic. Accessed 21 Mar. 2026.
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