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"
beyond or outside an area of immediate interest; remote; "a suggestion ulterior to the present discussion"; "without...any purpose, immediate or ulterior"- G.B.Shaw
difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge; "the professor's lectures were so abstruse that students tended to avoid them"; "a deep metaphysical theory"; "some recondite problem in historiography"
resembling an oracle in obscurity of thought; "the oracular sayings of Victorian poets"; "so enigmatic that priests might have to clarify it"; "an enigmatic smile"
not clear to the understanding; "I didn't grasp the meaning of that enigmatic comment until much later"; "prophetic texts so enigmatic that their meaning has been disputed for centuries"