I found this information in an abditory. If this were written in Latin, that would be abditorium, which is the source of “abditory.” The word has been around since at least 1658, when it was used by somebody known only as J Robinson in a publication called Endoxa:
“In the center of the kernel of grain, as the safest abditory, is the source of germination.”
“Abditory” has been residing in its own abditory over the centuries, because it’s always been pretty obscure. It has, though, been enjoying a bit of a surge in popularity in recent decades — not so much in common everyday usage, but in the hands of fiction writers. The first one to employ the word was probably mystery writer Rex Stout when he created, in 1934, an erudite amateur detective named Nero Wolfe. Wolfe enjoyed including obscure words in his books, and included “abditory.” Since then, the word has turned up in a number of other works of science fiction and fantasy. Here’s one example from Crimson Sky by Joel Rosenberg:
“That abditory, the one in the buffet at home, contained a set of spare passports and other papers that might be useful under extraordinary circumstances. Other abditories, like the compartment under the front hall stairway, contained survival kits, or weapons, or money, or things as prosaic as the emergency roll of toilet paper.”
And there you have it; an “abditory” is a hiding place; a stash. The only other English word it’s related to is the even more obscure “abdite,” which describes something arcane or abstruse: “Things supernaturall we finde The depth whereof we cannot well conceive To [= too] Abdite and retruse from man’s weake minde.”
Sorry, but I couldn’t find a better citation; “abdite” is so abdite it hasn’t been used since the 1600s.
