What is the different between obstruse and abstract?

Answer 1

They're not the same thing, even. Abstruse (lots of spelling variants, including "obstruse") means difficult to comprehend. Abstract means unrelated to concrete reality or meaning. A historical document could be about totally concrete events, but contain completely abstruse, meaning difficult to read. Now arguably, being abstruse requires an element of philosophy, but not all philosophical inquiry is abstract. For instance, if comparisons between periods in history are made that are very difficult to understand, but nonetheless reflect concrete reality. (Comparing the Great Depression with the events that led up to the railroad glut of late 19th century, for instance.) The idea that any one thing has to do with another thing it is not is, I suppose, abstract the vaguest possible sense, but nobody's going to understand your meaning if you throw the word around like. Alternately, you could argue that many abstract ideas are not abstruse. For instance, most people understand that 1 plus 1 equals two, or have an idea that murder is evil, even if numbers and good and evil are abstract concepts. Because abstruse has two elements -- being both meanderingly philosophical or rhetorical, and being difficult to understand -- it's easy to remember it as a combination of the words abstract (only as it relates to philosophy; don't confuse yourself that all abstruse things are necessarily abstract), and oblique, which is sort of like obtuse, which sounds like it combines with abstract to form abstruse. At least, that works form me. A little art is involved in convincing yourself that this reasoning works, but once you do, you'll be able to pull abstruse out of your ass and impress your friends! (Or punish them...)