black art

noun

Definitions

  1. A practice such as witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, or black magic.

    • dabbling in the black arts
    • In 1690s Salem, anyone was at mortal risk of being accused of practicing the black arts.
    • For even the enchantresses Circe and Medea could not, by their black arts, prevent the unfaithfulness of Odysseus and Jason.
  2. A process that is esoteric or difficult to master.

    • Operating a hand card punch was something of a black art.
    • Traincrew management has always been a bit of a black art, rather than a science. The present traincrew difficulties that beset the UK rail industry are neither new nor were they unforeseeable.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for black art. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA