zarf

Pronounced: zarf, noun

Notes: I didn’t know that there was a word for this!

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Yesterday’s word

The word esoteric means

• designed for or understood only by a select group or those with special knowledge
• limited to a small circle; private; confidential

First usage

Our word came into English in the mid-1600s

Background / Comments

I have used the word, but I thought that it meant “difficult” or possibly “highly unusual”: thus, when I used “an esoteric comment”, I was thinking of a highly unusual comment; not quite “only understood if one has specialized knowledge”. As can be seen from the definition above, my usage wasn’t quite correct. Our word came from the Late Latin word esotericus, which came from the Greek word esōterikos, which is based on a comparitive form of esō (within). The opposite of esoteric is “exoteric” (suitable to be imparted to the public).