ignoramus
/ˌɪɡ.nəˈɹeɪ.məs/
ignoramus · noun — A totally ignorant person—unknowledgeable, uneducated, or uninformed; a fool. It carries an Arena rating of 1811, earned across 24 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, ignoramus ranks #83 of 17,188 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,392 of 17,146 for Most Storied Words, #1,852 of 17,187 for Most Malleable Words, #1,881 of 17,165 for Most Satisfying to Say.
ignoramus is pronounced /ˌɪɡ.nəˈɹeɪ.məs/.
Why “ignoramus” is a great word
A profoundly ignorant person, or a formal legal notation that a case lacks sufficient evidence for trial. From the Latin ignōrāmus ('we do not know'), first-person plural present active indicative of ignōrō ('to not know'). Popularized as a term for an ignorant person after the 1615 play Ignoramus by George Ruggle, which featured an ignorant lawyer of that name. Unlike 'dunce,' which implies a lumbering inability to learn in a scholastic setting, or its direct opposite 'scholar,' an ignoramus is marked by a specific, often willful absence of knowing. It is the cocksure nod in a conversation about a subject never studied, the blank stare at a map of a country one cannot place, and the loud, confident vote cast on a referendum whose text was never read—the quiet, persistent force of a mind contentedly shuttered.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
After the ignorant lawyer Ignoramus, the titular character in the 1615 play Ignoramus by the English playwright George Ruggle; from Latin ignōrāmus (“we do not know, we are unacquainted with, we are ignorant of”), the first-person plural present active indicative of ignōrō (“to not know, to be unacquainted with, to be ignorant of”).
noun
- A totally ignorant person—unknowledgeable, uneducated, or uninformed; a fool.e.g.“The problem is that visual ignoramuses, such as this writer, can't think of that many pictures and end up drawing question marks where a frog should be.” — 2006 April 18, Philip Beadle, “Mind maps: rubbish in theory, but handy in practice”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
- A grand jury's ruling on an indictment when the evidence is determined to be insufficient to send the case to trial.
verb
- To make such a ruling against (an indictment).
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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