esotery

English edit

Noun edit

esotery (plural esoteries)

Mystery; esoterics; knowledge or lore that is esoteric.
- 1763, Abraham Tucker, Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Fate:
  adapt their subjects to their audience , reserving their esoteries for adepts , and dealing out exoteries only to the vulgar
- 1839 September 26, "Vindex," Letter to the editor, The Musical World, Number CLXXXIV [New Series no. XCI], Volume XII [New Series Volume V], May 23—December 26 1839, page 334,
  But a more important division of the musical public, is that of the learned and unlearned, the esoteries and exoteries ; and in no country whatever have I yet heard a perfectly educated musician call Mozart second-rate.
- 1925, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, numbers 56-57, page 222:
  Later on, the doctrine, owing to the contact with the esoteries of the Upanishads, was burdened with scholastic elements: the ideal of an Arhat, aspiring to Nirvana, was excogitated.
- 1954, William Bruce Cameron, Sociological Notes on the Jam Session, Social Forces, Volume 33, page 179, quoted in 2008, Paul Rinzler, The Contradictions of Jazz, page 54,
  This means, of course, a continual advance into abstraction and esotery, so that contemporary jazz is always musical casuistry, forever seeking new ways to rationalize the impossible.
- 1995, Bhai Nahar Singh, Bhai Kirpal Singh, Rebels Against the British Rule, page 99:
  Whilst Ram Singh was in quasi-confinemcnt at Bhainee, there was a charm of mystery and esotery about the man, to which our espionage, perhaps, added a spice of fascinating prosecution.
- 1996, Anthony Julius, T.S. Eliot, anti-semitism, and literary form‎^[1], page 92:
  Indeed, one might suppose that its esoteries, its intangibilities, and its rarefied and personal visions, would make it invulnerable to the conformist vulgarities of anti-Semitism.
- 2007, Pane Andov, Extraordinary Powers in Humans‎^[2], page 72:
  That was the time when my uncle went to Tibet and I was learning the secrets of esotery from my second teacher Velibor Rabljenovich.

Antonyms edit

exotery

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “esotery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)