occult

Formsoccults, occulting, occulted

1. 1
   the supernaturalnoununcountablewith the

   Supernatural affairs, taken together as a whole.

   The novel's villain dabbles in the occult and holds séances in his attic.

   After the strange lights over the lake, interest in the occult swept through the town.

   Similarsupernatural, paranormal

2. 2
   adjective

   Relating to supernatural matters such as mysticism, magic, or astrology.

   Many Renaissance scholars studied alchemy and other occult sciences alongside medicine.

   She collects rare occult books on tarot and astrology.

   Similarsupernatural, mystical, magical, esoteric, arcane

3. 3
   undetectedadjective

   Hidden or undetected, and so not known or noticed in the ordinary way.

   In some patients, an occult cancer is discovered only after it has spread.

   The study screened young athletes for occult heart disease.

   Similarhidden, undetected, latent

   Oppositeovert, manifest

   Note

   Doctors use the word plainly, with none of the magical meaning: an occult cancer or occult heart disease exists but has not yet shown itself on the first look or the first tests. It sits before the noun as a clinical label, so in a medical report it describes what has gone unnoticed, never anything uncanny.

4. 4
   adjective

   Not visible to the eye, but detectable by chemical testing.

   A yearly stool test can catch occult bleeding before any symptoms appear.

   The lab found occult blood in the sample, so the doctor ordered more tests.

   Oppositevisible

   Note

   Blood is the usual subject. A fecal occult blood test looks for traces too slight to change a sample's color, and doctors use it as an early check for bleeding in the bowel, long before anyone would notice it. The same chemical meaning covers occult blood in the urine.

5. 5
   obscureadjective

   Esoteric: known or understood by only a few people, and obscure to everyone else.

   The contract was full of occult legal terms that only a specialist could follow.

   To outsiders, the scoring rules of the tournament seemed almost occult.

   Similaresoteric, arcane, obscure, abstruse, recondite

   Oppositeclear, plain, accessible

6. 6
   block from viewverbtransitive

   To cover or hide something from view, as when one celestial body passes in front of another.

   Tonight the moon will occult a bright star near the eastern horizon.

   Astronomers timed how long the asteroid occulted the distant star to work out its size.

   Similareclipse, obscure, cover, hide

   Note

   Astronomers keep Latin occultus, "hidden," at its most literal: one body occults another by passing in front of it, and the event is an occultation. When the nearer body looks much smaller than the one behind it, as with a planet crossing the face of the Sun, the event is called a transit instead. Every other meaning of the word grows from the same idea of hiding.

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