Sunday Word: Arcana

[sallymn]

arcana [ahr-key-nuh]

noun:
mysterious or specialized knowledge, language, or information accessible or possessed only by the initiate

Examples:

What became clear is that even publishers, agents, and retailers, who’ve rightly been focused on signing writers and selling books, didn’t appreciate how much the arcana of the business would matter in the move to digital platforms. (Tim Carmody, Why Metadata Matters for the Future of E-Books, WIRED, August 2010)

His novels move with kinetic energy, his plots are intricate puzzles shrouded in religious iconography, ancient cryptography and other obscure arcana. (Marc Weingarten, 'The Da Vinci Code' stunned the world. Now Dan Brown releases his most ambitious book yet, Los Angeles Times, September 2025)

And beyond all else he glimpsed an infinite gulf of sheer darkness, where solid and semi-solid forms were known only by their windy stirrings, and cloudy patterns of force seemed to superimpose order on chaos and hold forth a key to all the paradoxes and arcana of the worlds we know. (H P Lovecraft, 'The Haunter of the Dark')

We are the subjects, and so is everything around us, of all manner of subtle and inexplicable influences: and if our ancestors attached too much importance to these ill-understood arcana of the night-side of nature, we have attached too little. (Catherine Crowe, The Night Side of Nature)

"Under the impression," said Mr Micawber, "that your peregrinations in this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction of the City Road, - in short," said Mr Micawber, in another burst of confidence, "that you might lose yourself - I shall be happy to call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way." (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield)

Indeed, it is to be feared that some of the more rustic and bashful youths of Devil's Ford, who had felt it incumbent upon them to pay their respects to the new-comers, were more at ease in this vestibule than in the arcana beyond, whose glories they could see through the open door. (Bret Harte, Devil's Ford)

Origin:
'hidden things, mysteries,' 1590s, a direct adoption of the Latin plural of arcanum 'a secret, a mystery,' an important word in alchemy, from neuter of adjective arcanus 'secret, hidden, private, concealed' (see arcane). It was occasionally mistaken for a singular and pluralized as arcanas, because arcana is far more common than arcanum. (Online Etymology Dictionary)