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- Dictionarycryptic/ˈkrɪptɪk/
adjective
- 1. having a meaning that is mysterious or obscure: "he found his boss's utterances too cryptic"
- 2. (of coloration or markings) serving to camouflage an animal in its natural environment: "cryptic plumage is thought to minimize predation"
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mysterious and difficult to understand: a cryptic message / remark.
secret, occult; having or seeming to have a hidden or ambiguous meaning : mysterious; marked by an often perplexing brevity… See the full definition
Cryptic definition: mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous. See examples of CRYPTIC used in a sentence.
A cryptic remark or message contains a hidden meaning or is difficult to understand. He has issued a short, cryptic statement denying the spying charges. My father's notes are more cryptic here.
Cryptic comments or messages are hard to understand because they seem to have a hidden meaning. Cryptic is from Late Latin crypticus, from Greek kryptos, "hidden." This Greek adjective is the source of the English noun crypt, referring to a room under a church in which dead people are buried.
mysterious and difficult to understand: I got a cryptic text message from Sam. Synonyms. enigmatic. inscrutable. mysterious. SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases. Difficult to understand. abstrusely. ambiguity. ambiguously. esoterically. fathomlessly. garble. get it through your thick head idiom. it's all Greek to me idiom. labyrinthine.
1. Having hidden meaning; mystifying. See Synonyms at mysterious. 2. Secret or occult. 3. Using code or cipher. 4. Biology Tending to conceal or camouflage: cryptic coloring. [Late Latin crypticus, from Greek kruptikos, from kruptos, hidden, from kruptein, to hide .] cryp′ti·cal·ly adv. cryp′tic·ness n.
CRYPTIC meaning: difficult to understand having or seeming to have a hidden meaning.
Definition of cryptic adjective in Oxford Advanced American Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.
Noun. Filter. adjective. Having a hidden or ambiguous meaning; mysterious; baffling. A cryptic comment. Webster's New World. Similar definitions. Secret or occult. American Heritage. Obscure and curt in expression. Webster's New World. Similar definitions. Serving to conceal, as the form or coloration of certain animals. Webster's New World.
