"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event" ... Oscar Wilde
Word of the Day
Nescient (adjective)
Pronunciation: [‘ne-shent, ‘ne-si-yênt]
Definition: (1) Ignorant, lacking knowledge; (2) agnostic, believing that man is incapable of understanding the nature of the universe.
Usage: “Nescient” has few relatives. The noun from it is “nescience” while “nesciently” is the adverb. It has a cousin, “nescious,” with the same meaning, which is related to “nice” (see Etymology). It is distantly related to nescio “a claim of ignorance, of not knowning,” from the Latin word nescio “I don’t know.” This word is a useful noun for our times: “US courtrooms today resound with the nescios of corporate executives squirming on the witness stand.”
Suggested Usage: Occasionally you may wish to speak your mind without wanting it to be understood. “I think your comment reflects a profound nescience of the problem, Slobodan,” might even get you a nod of gratitude from the target of your insult. Places do exist, by the way, where nescience is not at all out of place, “Mr. Chips’s heart tightened ever so slightly before yet another sea of nescient freshman faces in the auditorium.”
Etymology: Today’s word is a borrowing from Latin “nesciens,” the present participle of nescire “to be ignorant,” derived from ne- “not” + scire “to know.” The Latin word belonged to a family that included “nescius,” borrowed into English as nescious (see Usage). In Old French, the same word was reduced to “nise” and was borrowed into Old English as “nice,” meaning “foolish, silly,” a meaning that inexplicably migrated to what it is today.
–Dr. Language, YourDictionary.com
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