enigma

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:

enigma

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• aenigma, ænigma (both archaic)

Etymology

From Latin aenigma (“riddle”), being derived itself from the Ancient Greek verbal noun αἴνιγμα (aínigma, “dark saying, speaking in riddles”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɪˈnɪɡmə/, /əˈnɪɡmə/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪɡmə

Noun

enigma (countable and uncountable, plural enigmas or enigmata)

1. Something or someone puzzling, mysterious or inexplicable.
   • 1894, Abram H. Dailey, Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn Enigma, page 66:

     I was, and still am, an enigma to myself.

   • 1995, Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key, page 92:

     At the heart of all things there is to be found a certain coincidentia oppositorum; and herein, as I have said, lies the key to our problem: the enigma of indeterminism. The astounding fact is that freedom and necessity can coexist;

   • 2007, Ramon Elmerito Gatchalian, A Supernatural Threat, page 9:

     Tucked inconspicuously away behind the shoal of darkness that hung in those gloomy corners, the silhouetted enigma was ogling him in halcyon silence.

   • 2007, Fernando Arrojo Ramos, Enigmas:

     But as he came to know this work during his last months, he also came to a profound understanding of the many enigmas that create a deeply satisfying life.

   • 2009, Vinton McCabe, The Healing Enigma: Demystifying Homeopathy:

     The enigma that is central to homeopathic medicine has to do with the relationship between dilution and potency.

   • 2021, Cynthia Lucy Stephens, The Borges Enigma: Mirrors, Doubles, and Intimate Puzzles, page 6:

     The 'Real' Borges is difficult to pin down; in a word, he is an enigma.

2. A riddle, or a difficult problem.
   • 1598, William Shakespeare, Loves Labour's Lost:

     Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy, begin.

   • 1879, Henry C. Linstead, The marvellous house; or, The bishop's enigma, page 91:

     This little story before us is an amplification of that clever enigma, and though essentially a story for children, as its title-page tells us, would beguile many a one much older of a half-hour in the evening.

   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, , →OCLC, part I, page 202:

     Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma.

   • 2005, Jenny Ledeen, Prophecy in the Christian Era, page 165:

     Logic sorts the information in an enigma, logic determines that something is odd about this information, and logic draws inferences from an enigma's words; but logic cannot produce ideas.

   • 2010, Enrico Rodrigo, The Physics of Stargates, page 323:

     The other solution to the central enigma of wormhold physics is to simply discard Thales' doctrine.

   • 2013, Tilak Nagodawithana, Gerald Reed, Enzymes in Food Processing, page 222:

     The function of polyphenol oxidase in plants is an enigma because, although it is localized in the plastid, most of the phenolic compounds are in the vacuole, a cellular location not juxtaposed to the plastid.

3. Riddles and puzzles, collectively.
   • 2000, Harish Trivedi, Richard Allen, Literature and Nation, page 147:

     From the beginning, readers of The Enigma of Arrival are likely to feel surrounded by enigma and puzzle.

   • 2005, Jenny Ledeen, Prophecy in the Christian Era, page 165:

     These examples show that two processes are tested in enigma - logic and intuition. It is intuition that discovers the specific idea that may be called the “ wisdom ” of a given riddle, whereas logic is confounded by enigma and can only produce inadequate interpretations.

   • 2010, Ward Just, Exiles in the Garden, page 162:

     It was her secret, which she shared with no one except Alec Malone. Her husband would not have understood. Invisible wounds were not in his inventory of useful patents. He had even less interest in enigma.

4. Mysteriousness; obscurity; lack of clarity.
   • 1995, Ian Ward ·, Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives, page 203:

     In those halcyon days I believed that the source of enigma was stupidity .

   • 1998 ·, Richard L. Hunter, Studies in Heliodorus, page 80:

     The circumstances under which the band is obtained and the strange story that it tells are wrapped in enigma that challenges the hermeneutic powers of the reader .

   • 2010, Keala Jewell, Art of Enigma, page 194:

     […] a politics of hybridity that led the brothers to that overarching trait of their art: the accumulation of styles, subjects, materials, textualities, all framed in enigma .

   • 2011, Ido Yavetz, From Obscurity to Enigma, page 184:

     All this will put us in a position to better understand how Heaviside emerged from obscurity only to remain shrouded in enigma.

   • 2018, Brigid Rooney, Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity, page 93:

     In Johnno, expatriatism is destabilized both explicitly and implicitly, and its correlated 'long remove' governed less by spatial than by temporal distance, by enigma and loss.

5. A style of literature characterized by obscurity and hints of transcendental meaning.
   • 1971, Paul West, Caliban's filibuster, page 233:

     But in a sense it is probably close to this book— a series of juxtaposed splinters of meaning, which perhaps once in ten million times will come out as a piece of interpretable prose, with the black pieces intervening, and possibly one could look at this as a one-in-ten million exercise in enigma perhaps meaning something.

   • 1974, Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations Into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism, page 45:

     Isidore, on the other hand, while beginning with the traditional classification, proceeds to distinguish between allegory and enigma in a way that reveals a more unusual perception: There is this difference, however, between allegory and enigma, that the force of allegory is twofold, and figuratively indicates a second meaning behind the first, while in enigma it is only the meaning that is dark, and adumbrated by means of images.

   • 2006, Eleanor Cook, Enigmas and Riddles in Literature, page 53:

     About the time of Shakespeare's first plays, two important rhetorical treatises appeared in England, George Puttenham's Art of English Poesie (1589) and the enlarged edition of Henry Peacham's 1577 Garden of Eloquence (1593). Both take an interest in enigma. Puttenham, like Peacham, gives the essentials for the trope of enigma, but with flamboyant flourishes: "allegorie [is] but a duplicitie of meaning or dissimulation under covert and darke intendments. . . [even in the] common proverbe or Adage called Paremia," and so on through all the species, in similar dramatic fashion.

   • 2017, Curtis A. Gruenler, Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma:

     The interpretive effort elicited by enigma approaches an instant of transcendent understanding that has the force of revelation, yet without ever fully or permanently reaching it.

6. Alternative form of Enigma
   • 2002, David Syrett, The Battle of the Atlantic and Signals Intelligence, page 59:

     This U-boat consistently used Norddeich or Kootwijk frequencies for her shadowing reports, all of which were in enigma.

   • 2011, Dan Ryan, Enigma: The Caldwell Series, page 287:

     Because of the danger of intercept, transmissions by a submarine are minimized and are coded by enigma.

   • 2017, Catherine Coulter, Enigma, page 79:

     Everybody knows enigma was the code the Germans used back in World War Two. There was a movie about the Brit guy who broke it.

7. A protein with three LIM domains (a conserved cysteine- and histidine-rich structure of two adjacent zinc fingers) at the C terminus that regulates protein phosphorylation.
   • 2007, Matti Weckström, Pasi Tavi, Cardiac Mechanotransduction, page 84:

     Members of this LIM protein family expressed in muscle include muscle LIM protein (MLP), enigma, actinin-associated LIM protein (ALP), cypher, four and a half LIM-only protein FHL/SLIM, and heart LIM protein (HLP).

   • 2007, Shiro Iuchi, Natalie Kuldell, Zinc Finger Proteins: From Atomic Contact to Cellular Function, page 101:

     Yeast two-hybrid screening revealed that enigma binds to the insulin receptor (InsR) internalization motif.

   • 2012, Anthony J. Pawson, Protein Modules in Signal Transduction, page 86:

     Enigma is a predominantly cytoplasmic protein that contains one PDZ domain at its N terminus and three LIM domains at its C terminus.

8. The Talaud kingfisher, Todiramphus enigma.
   • 1997, Jon Riley, Biological Surveys and Conservation Priorities on the Sangihe and Talaud Islands, Indonesia:

     As noted by Fry (1980), if both forms were shown to be resident and breeding on Talaud, enigma must be accorded specific status.

   • 1998, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club - Volumes 118-119, page 116:

     No conclusive proof of breeding by enigma was obtained, but during late September and October 1995, birds were paired and holding territory in central Karakelang.

   • 2001, Ernst Mayr, Jared Diamond, The Birds of Northern Melanesia, page 386:

     The Talaud population enigma may be a race of H. chloris ( Eck 1978 ) or a distinct species ( White & Bruce 1986 ).

9. Any of species of Oedaleonotus enigma of grasshoppers.
   • 1972, United States. Forest Service, Forest Insect Conditions in the United States, page 13:

     The principal species involved were the migratory grasshopper, Melanoplus sanguinipes (Fab.); the Packard grasshopper, Melanoplus packardii Scudd.; the clearwinged grasshopper, Camnula pellucida (Scudd.); and the Enigma Oedaleonotus enigma Scudd.

10. Any of species of Heliothis enigma of rare moths.
    • 1970, Mississippi State University, Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, Technical Bulletin, numbers 179-191, page 9:

      Unlike any other species except virescens , the base of the male valve in enigma is slightly expanded and is entirely covered by hair insertions; unlike virescens, the base of the valve is not expanded into a large corema.

Derived terms

• enigma canon
• riddle wrapped in an enigma
• Enigma machine
• enigmatic

Translations

References

Anagrams

• gamine, imagen, in-game

Asturian

Etymology

From Latin aenigma (“riddle”), from Ancient Greek αἴνιγμα (aínigma, “dark saying, riddle”).

Noun

enigma m (plural enigmes)

1. enigma

Related terms

• enigmáticu

Basque

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish enigma, from Latin aenigma (“riddle”), from Ancient Greek αἴνιγμα (aínigma, “dark saying, riddle”).

Noun

enigma inan

1. enigma

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin aenigma (“riddle”), from Ancient Greek αἴνιγμα (aínigma, “dark saying, riddle”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic)
• IPA^(key): (Valencian)

Noun

enigma m (plural enigmes)

1. enigma

Derived terms

• enigmàtic

Further reading

• “enigma” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Esperanto

Etymology

enigmo +‎ -a

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Adjective

enigma (accusative singular enigman, plural enigmaj, accusative plural enigmajn)

1. enigmatic

Finnish

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin aenigma, from Ancient Greek αἴνιγμα (aínigma).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈeniɡmɑ/,
• Rhymes: -eniɡmɑ
• Syllabification^(key): e‧nig‧ma

Noun

enigma

1. enigma

Declension

Galician

Etymology

From Latin aenigma (“riddle”), from Ancient Greek αἴνιγμα (aínigma, “dark saying, riddle”).

Noun

enigma m (plural enigmas)

1. enigma

Related terms

• enigmático

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin ænigma, from Ancient Greek αἴνιγμα (aínigma).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /eˈniɡ.ma/
• Rhymes: -iɡma
• Hyphenation: e‧nìg‧ma

Noun

enigma m (plural enigmi)

1. enigma, riddle, conundrum

   Synonyms: giallo, mistero

Related terms

• enigmatico
• enigmista
• enigmistica
• enigmistico

References

Anagrams

• Nimega, gemina, igname

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /eːˈniɡ.ma/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /eˈniɡ.ma/,

Noun

ēnigma n (genitive ēnigmatis); third declension

1. Alternative form of aenigma

Declension

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

Polish

Etymology

Borrowed from French énigme.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɛˈɲiɡ.ma/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iɡma
• Syllabification: e‧nig‧ma

Noun

enigma f

1. (literary) enigma (something puzzling, mysterious or inexplicable)

   Synonyms: tajemnica, zagadka

Declension

Related terms

Further reading

• enigma in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• enigma in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin aenigma (“riddle”), from Ancient Greek αἴνιγμα (aínigma, “dark saying, riddle”).

Pronunciation

• Hyphenation: e‧nig‧ma

Noun

enigma m (plural enigmas)

1. enigma

Related terms

• enigmático

Romanian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):

Noun

enigma f

1. definite nominative/accusative singular of enigmă

Spanish

Spanish Wikipedia has an article on:

enigma

Wikipedia ^es

Etymology

From Latin aenigma (“riddle”), from Ancient Greek αἴνιγμα (aínigma, “dark saying, riddle”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /eˈniɡma/
• Rhymes: -iɡma
• Syllabification: e‧nig‧ma

Noun

enigma m (plural enigmas)

1. enigma, conundrum (something that is puzzling)
2. riddle, conundrum

   Synonym: acertijo

Related terms

Further reading

• “enigma”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014

Anagrams

• gemina