ignorabimus · noun — A statement such that whether or not it is true can never be known. It carries an Arena rating of 1619, earned across 34 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, ignorabimus ranks #35 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #855 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #920 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #1,509 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
Why “ignorabimus” is a great word
IGNORABIMUS — [Noun] A formal declaration that a specific truth is permanently and fundamentally unknowable. From Latin ignorabimus, first-person plural future indicative of ignorare ("to not know"), literally meaning "we shall not know"; specifically coined in the 1872 address "Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens" by the German physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond as part of the maxim "Ignoramus et ignorabimus" ("We do not know and we shall not know"). Unlike "ignoramus" (which labels an unlearned person) or "agnosticism" (a broad suspension of judgment), an ignorabimus is a specific, procedural verdict delivered at the outermost edge of inquiry. It is the astronomer admitting a permanent horizon at the edge of the observable cosmos, the historian confronting a burned archive's final silence, and the specific stillness in a laboratory when instruments register nothing at all—not an absence of data, but the data of absence itself. This is the dignified, final silence at the end of a very long and careful search.
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noun
- A statement such that whether or not it is true can never be known.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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