The word esoteric was first used in a 1660 history of philosophy, where it was spelled esoterick. It was taken from Ancient Greek esoterikos, which meant "belonging to an inner circle" (this was later applied to knowledge to give us our modern definition). The term was first applied to the teachings of Pythagoras, which were meant only for his followers. That's from esotero, a comparative adverb of eso, meaning "within". Finally, it derives from Proto-Indo-European ens, "in". The opposite of esoteric is the word exoteric, meaning "understood by the general public". That comes from Ancient Greek exoterikos, "belonging to an outer circle", and traces to PIE ex-, "out of". Both words have been increasing in usage lately, but esoteric is used more than ten times as much, making exoteric the esoteric one.
3 Comments
d4v1d
4/19/2020 03:26:48 am
which leads me to wonder, why not endoteric? in current use, this would be more readily understood and entirely self-explanatory
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Steven Hildreth
11/20/2024 01:10:36 pm
Came here for the same reason. Still no clue.
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history.
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