Adjacent Words

Mysterious definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

MYSTE'RIOUS, a. [See Mystery.] Obscure; hid from the understanding; not clearly understood. The birth and connections of the man with the iron mask in France are mysterious, and have never been explained.
1. In religion, obscure; secret; not revealed or explained; hidden from human understanding, or unintelligible; beyond human comprehension. Applied to the divine counsels and government, the word often implies something awfully obscure; as, the ways of God are often mysterious.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: of an obscure nature; "the new insurance policy is written without cryptic or mysterious terms"; "a deep dark secret"; "the inscrutable workings of Providence"; "in its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life"- Rachel Carson; "rituals totally mystifying to visitors from other lands" [syn: cryptic, cryptical, deep, inscrutable, mysterious, mystifying]
2: having an import not apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence; beyond ordinary understanding; "mysterious symbols"; "the mystical style of Blake"; "occult lore"; "the secret learning of the ancients" [syn: mysterious, mystic, mystical, occult, secret, orphic]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1599 1. a. of, relating to, or constituting mystery <the mysterious ways of God> b. exciting wonder, curiosity, or surprise while baffling efforts to comprehend or identify ; mystifying <heard a mysterious noise> <a mysterious stranger> 2. stirred by or attracted to the inexplicable • mysteriously adverb • mysteriousness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 full of or wrapped in mystery. 2 (of a person) delighting in mystery. Derivatives: mysteriously adv. mysteriousness n. Etymology: F mystérieux f. mystère f. OF (as MYSTERY(1))

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Mysterious Mys*te"ri*ous, a. [F. myst[`e]rieux. See 1st Mystery.] Of or pertaining to mystery; containing a mystery; difficult or impossible to understand; obscure not revealed or explained; enigmatical; incomprehensible. God at last To Satan, first in sin, his doom applied, Thought in mysterious terms. --Milton. Syn: Obscure; secret; occult; dark; mystic; cabalistic; enigmatical; unintelligible; incomprehensible.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. Someone or something that is mysterious is strange and is not known about or understood. He died in mysterious circumstances... A mysterious illness confined him to bed for over a month... The whole thing seems very mysterious... ADJ • mysteriously A couple of messages had mysteriously disappeared. ADV: usu ADV with v 2. If someone is mysterious about something, they deliberately do not talk much about it, sometimes because they want to make people more interested in it. As for his job–well, he was very mysterious about it. ADJ: v-link ADJ, oft ADJ about n • mysteriously Asked what she meant, she said mysteriously: 'Work it out for yourself'. ADV: ADV after v

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Unknown, enigmatical, obscure, hidden, occult, inscrutable, recondite, secret, unintelligible, mystic, mystical, dark, cabalistic, abstruse, incomprehensible.

Moby Thesaurus

able, abstruse, ambiguous, amphibological, amphibolous, anagogic, arcane, awe-inspiring, awesome, awful, awing, baffling, beclouded, bewildering, bizarre, blind, bothering, buried, cabalic, cabalistic, censored, classified, close, closed, clouded, concealed, confounding, confusing, covered, covert, cryptic, curious, dark, discomposing, disconcerting, dismaying, distracting, disturbing, eclipsed, eerie, embarrassing, enigmatic, enwrapped in mystery, equivocal, equivocatory, esoteric, extramundane, extraterrestrial, fey, furtive, hermetic, hid, hidden, hush-hush, hypernormal, hyperphysical, impenetrable, in a cloud, in a fog, in eclipse, in purdah, in the wings, incalculable, incognizable, incommunicado, incomprehensible, indefinable, inexplicable, inextricable, inscrutable, insoluble, insolvable, intricate, ironic, latent, metaphysic, multivocal, mystic, mystical, mystifying, numinous, obfuscated, obscure, obscured, occult, otherworldly, perplexing, perturbing, polysemantic, polysemous, preterhuman, preternatural, preternormal, pretersensual, problematic, psychic, puzzling, recondite, restricted, sealed, secluded, secluse, secret, sequestered, smothered, spiritual, stifled, strange, superhuman, supernatural, supernormal, superphysical, supersensible, supersensual, suppressed, supramundane, supranatural, theosophical, theosophist, top secret, transcendental, transmundane, ulterior, unaccountable, unapparent, unapprehended, unascertained, unbeknown, unbreatheable, uncanny, uncertain, uncharted, unclassified, unclear, undefinable, under an eclipse, under cover, under house arrest, under security, under wraps, underground, undisclosable, undisclosed, undiscoverable, undiscovered, undivulgable, undivulged, unearthly, unexplainable, unexplained, unexplored, unexposed, unfamiliar, unfathomable, unfathomed, ungraspable, unguessed, unheard, unheard-of, unhuman, unidentified, unintelligible, uninterpretable, uninvestigated, unknowable, unknown, unperceived, unplumbed, unrevealable, unrevealed, unsolvable, unspoken, unsuspected, untellable, untold, untouched, unutterable, unuttered, unwhisperable, unworldly, upsetting, virgin, weird, wrapped in clouds