How to Use abstruse in a Sentence

abstruse

adjective
  • Her subject matter is abstruse.
  • Dragon math is an abstruse branch of wartime arithmetic.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 22 June 2026
  • At the heart of the progress has been von Neumann’s abstruse research.
    — Quanta Magazine, 25 Sep. 2024
  • Such abstruse questions seem far removed from present-day concerns.
    — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2024
  • But she is known for her more abstruse constructions, and those will be showcased at the Met.
    — Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 21 Oct. 2016
  • If the bank’s lawyers are right, the plot was extraordinarily abstruse.
    — Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2020
  • Here, her motives are more abstruse, to slightly dimmed dramatic effect.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 3 Feb. 2024
  • Her voice was as engaging and charming as her ex-husband’s was abstruse and highfalutin.
    — Penelope Green, New York Times, 7 Dec. 2023
  • But the turn feels less absurd than abstruse, sudden even, given the film’s prior resistance to laugh at itself.
    — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 3 Sep. 2025
  • Some questioned what the White House could gain from reviewing abstruse rules for nuclear safety.
    — Geoff Brumfiel, NPR, 9 May 2025
  • This is a somewhat abstruse goal, aiming not to stop technological change but to remake its character.
    — Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, 8 Apr. 2026
  • No subject is too abstruse for his fiendishly playful comic imagination.
    — Ashley Lee, Los Angeles Times, 11 June 2023
  • Such work might seem abstruse to outsiders, but uses abound, from cosmology to cryptography.
    — The Economist, 20 July 2017
  • Also, faith that all the abstruse wanderings will eventually get someplace.
    — Neil Genzlinger, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2016
  • Many of the fiercest issues of contention in contemporary discourse can be put aside if these abstruse philosophical claims are correct.
    — Oliver Traldi, Washington Examiner, 1 June 2023
  • The decades-old concept could explain many things, such as where WIMPs come from, but its main job is to solve a more abstruse problem.
    — Byadrian Cho, science.org, 28 Mar. 2024
  • To emphasize the importance of math, Winkler displayed a handful of abstruse equations.
    — Neil J. Rubenking, PC Magazine, 2 May 2025
  • Like bird-watching or gardening, overseeing homework is a specialized and abstruse hobby.
    — Saul Austerlitz, New York Times, 5 Sep. 2023
  • What looks like abstruse economic theory will rapidly turn into hard financial fact if Italy’s elections go the wrong way and its bond market sours.
    — James MacKintosh, WSJ, 4 Sep. 2017
  • Still, Vigna and Casey commendably explain an abstruse concept from first principles.
    — Stephen Phillips, San Francisco Chronicle, 1 June 2018
  • The film that results is at once panicky and abstruse, and we are left with little more than the delirious shine of McConaughey’s eyes and the preacherly rapture in his voice.
    — Adam Davidson, The New Yorker, 6 Feb. 2017
  • Tunnelling, meanwhile, is an abstruse turn on a classic skill exemplified by the finest Dodger pitcher of them all, Sandy Koufax.
    — Nicholas Dawidoff, The New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2024
  • The procedures are so abstruse that a parliamentarian must sit below the presiding officer and, essentially, tell him or her what to say.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2021
  • This is not a problem for the experts to handle by making abstruse technocratic adjustments to complicated payment schedules.
    — Jay Cost, National Review, 12 Feb. 2018
  • More than many other abstruse areas of higher mathematics, chaos theory has captured the public imagination.
    — Martin Weil, BostonGlobe.com, 14 July 2019
  • First published in 1619, Kepler’s treatise was both an abstruse work of mathematics and a vision of the universe as a kind of celestial music box.
    — Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • This abstruse category of occupations includes architects, lawyers, artists, educators, doctors, and engineers, just to name a few.
    — NBC News, 11 Mar. 2020
  • Hour-long conversations would oscillate between abstruse metaphors representing indebtedness and poverty, and an equally opaque jargon composed of math and finance-speak.
    — Elena Botella, The New Republic, 2 Oct. 2019
  • The connection was abstruse but strong, similar in kind to the orchestra's pairing of Bruckner and John Adams in 2011.
    — Zachary Lewis, cleveland.com, 30 Apr. 2018
  • Unlike crossword puzzles, which require a tolerance for deciphering abstruse clues, sudoku merely asks players to count to 9 over and over again without repeating the same numeral in the same row or column.
    — Daniel Feit, WIRED, 1 Aug. 2012

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'abstruse.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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