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occult

UK/ˈɒk.ʌlt/US/əˈkʌlt/
nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,725 of 15,258neutral

The occult is practices concerned with magic and hidden powers. An interest in the occult, occult symbols, dabble in the occult.

The word means hidden, which is the whole idea: occult knowledge is knowledge kept from the uninitiated. In medicine the same word is technical and unmysterious — occult blood is blood present but not visible, and testing for it is routine.

Definitions of occult

  1. 1nounoccultPractices concerned with magic and hidden powers.C1

    “He became interested in the occult and spent nights reading about spells and spirits.”

occult is a practice.

Also accepted in games: occultism

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    occultus — hidden, secret

  2. English, today

    occult

Borrowed from Latin occultus (“hidden, secret”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

occult in the wild

  • In that same period, occult and culture were combined to form the neologism occulture.

    Occult

  • The founding figures of chaos magic believed that other occult traditions had become too religious in character.

    Chaos magic

  • A fecal occult blood test (FOBT) checks for hidden (occult) blood in the stool (feces).

    Fecal occult blood

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.