arcane är-ˈkān adjective
: requiring secret or mysterious knowledge
_________
The word arcane has appeared in 122 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Aug. 11 in the book review “When Railroads Controlled the Country” by Joshua B. Freeman:
“Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America,” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik, plunges into the battles and escapades of the entrepreneurs and investors who created the national rail system. Many of the early railroad financiers, like Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, Hiltzik argues, were “pirates,” with little interest in building or operating efficient transportation systems …
… The maneuvers and countermaneuvers of the railroad titans can be dizzying. It takes Hiltzik four chapters to cover the 1901 effort by Harriman to take control of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which ended only when Morgan set up a trust that assumed control over both that line and the competing Great Northern Railway (an arrangement the Supreme Court soon declared illegal). An able narrator, with an eye for telling detail, Hiltzik makes what otherwise might seem arcane financial details engrossing.
_________
