sciolism

Meaning

The practice of expressing opinions on something which one knows only superficially or has little real understanding of; also, shallow or superficial knowledge; (countable) an instance of this.

Synonyms

ignorance

unawareness

unfamilarity

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈsaɪ.ə.lɪ.z(ə)m/

Etymology

From Late Latin sciolus (“sciolist”) + English -ism (suffix forming the names of tendencies of action, behaviour, condition, opinion, or state belonging to classes or groups of persons), based on sciolist. Sciolus is a diminutive of Latin scius (“cognizant, knowing”) + -olus (variant of -ulus (suffix forming diminutives)); while scius is either from sciō (“to be able to; to have practical knowledge, know (how to do something); to understand”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to dissect; to split”)), or is a back-formation from nescius (“ignorant, unaware; unknowing”) (from nesciō (“to be ignorant, not know, not understand; to be unable”), from ne- (prefix meaning ‘not’) + sciō).