While "recondite" may be used to describe something difficult to understand, there is nothing recondite about the word's history. It dates to the early 1600s, when it was coined from the synonymous Latin word "reconditus." "Recondite" is one of those underused but useful words that's always a boon to one's vocabulary, but take off the "re-" and you get something very obscure: "condite" is an obsolete verb meaning both "to pickle or preserve" and "to embalm." If we add the prefix "in-" to "condite" we get "incondite," which means "badly put together," as in "incondite prose." All three words have Latin "condere" at their root; that verb is translated variously as "to put or bring together," "to put up, store," and "to conceal."