Definition of "enigma"

enigma

/ɪˈnɪɡmə/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural enigmas or enigmata
1. Something or someone puzzling, mysterious or inexplicable.
  Quotations
  I was, and still am, an enigma to myself.
  1894, Abram H. Dailey, Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn Enigma, page 66
  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;
  1995, Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key, page 92
  Tucked inconspicuously away behind the shoal of darkness that hung in those gloomy corners, the silhouetted enigma was ogling him in halcyon silence.
  2007, Ramon Elmerito Gatchalian, A Supernatural Threat, page 9
  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.
  2007, Fernando Arrojo Ramos, Enigmas
  The enigma that is central to homeopathic medicine has to do with the relationship between dilution and potency.
  2009, Vinton McCabe, The Healing Enigma: Demystifying Homeopathy
  The 'Real' Borges is difficult to pin down; in a word, he is an enigma.
  2021, Cynthia Lucy Stephens, The Borges Enigma: Mirrors, Doubles, and Intimate Puzzles, page 6
2. A riddle, or a difficult problem.
  Quotations
  Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy, begin.
  1598, William Shakespeare, Loves Labour's Lost
  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.
  1879, Henry C. Linstead, The marvellous house; or, The bishop's enigma, page 91
  Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma.
  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, […], part I, page 202
  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.
  2005, Jenny Ledeen, Prophecy in the Christian Era, page 165
  The other solution to the central enigma of wormhold physics is to simply discard Thales' doctrine.
  2010, Enrico Rodrigo, The Physics of Stargates, page 323
  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.
  2013, Tilak Nagodawithana, Gerald Reed, Enzymes in Food Processing, page 222
3. Riddles and puzzles, collectively.
  Quotations
  From the beginning, readers of The Enigma of Arrival are likely to feel surrounded by enigma and puzzle.
  2000, Harish Trivedi, Richard Allen, Literature and Nation, page 147
  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.
  2005, Jenny Ledeen, Prophecy in the Christian Era, page 165
  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.
  2010, Ward Just, Exiles in the Garden, page 162
4. Mysteriousness; obscurity; lack of clarity.
  Quotations
  In those halcyon days I believed that the source of enigma was stupidity .
  1995, Ian Ward ·, Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives, page 203
  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 .
  1998 ·, Richard L. Hunter, Studies in Heliodorus, page 80
  […] 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 .
  2010, Keala Jewell, Art of Enigma, page 194
  All this will put us in a position to better understand how Heaviside emerged from obscurity only to remain shrouded in enigma.
  2011, Ido Yavetz, From Obscurity to Enigma, page 184
  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.
  2018, Brigid Rooney, Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity, page 93
5. A style of literature characterized by obscurity and hints of transcendental meaning.
  Quotations
  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.
  1971, Paul West, Caliban's filibuster, page 233
  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.
  1974, Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations Into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism, page 45
  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.
  2006, Eleanor Cook, Enigmas and Riddles in Literature, page 53
  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.
  2017, Curtis A. Gruenler, Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma
6. Alternative form of Enigma
  Quotations
  This U-boat consistently used Norddeich or Kootwijk frequencies for her shadowing reports, all of which were in enigma.
  2002, David Syrett, The Battle of the Atlantic and Signals Intelligence, page 59
  Because of the danger of intercept, transmissions by a submarine are minimized and are coded by enigma.
  2011, Dan Ryan, Enigma: The Caldwell Series, page 287
  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.
  2017, Catherine Coulter, Enigma, page 79
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.
  Quotations
  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, Matti Weckström, Pasi Tavi, Cardiac Mechanotransduction, page 84
  Yeast two-hybrid screening revealed that enigma binds to the insulin receptor (InsR) internalization motif.
  2007, Shiro Iuchi, Natalie Kuldell, Zinc Finger Proteins: From Atomic Contact to Cellular Function, page 101
  Enigma is a predominantly cytoplasmic protein that contains one PDZ domain at its N terminus and three LIM domains at its C terminus.
  2012, Anthony J. Pawson, Protein Modules in Signal Transduction, page 86
8. The Talaud kingfisher, Todiramphus enigma.
  Quotations
  As noted by Fry (1980), if both forms were shown to be resident and breeding on Talaud, enigma must be accorded specific status.
  1997, Jon Riley, Biological Surveys and Conservation Priorities on the Sangihe and Talaud Islands, Indonesia
  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.
  1998, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club - Volumes 118-119, page 116
  The Talaud population enigma may be a race of H. chloris ( Eck 1978 ) or a distinct species ( White & Bruce 1986 ).
  2001, Ernst Mayr, Jared Diamond, The Birds of Northern Melanesia, page 386
9. A species of grasshopper, Oedaleonotus enigma.
  Quotations
  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.
  1972, United States. Forest Service, Forest Insect Conditions in the United States, page 13
10. A rare species of moth, Heliothis enigma.
  Quotations
  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.
  1970, Mississippi State University, Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, Technical Bulletin - Issues 179-191, page 9