What's the Word? April 4, 2021

What's the Word?

We're all familiar with words like, cluelessness, uninformed, unawareness.

How about a word that you could use about the person that fits the description and not sound insulting.

The word is nescience.

**Merriam-Webster - Definition: Lack of knowledge or awareness

**Merriam - Webster: example in a sentence: the appalling nescience of today's high schoolers concerning international affairs

Now, I would take out the appalling in that sentence and most people would be clueless as to what it meant.

**Merriam Webster:

Gain Some Knowledge of NescienceEighteenth-century British poet, essayist, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson once said, "There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it." He probably knew a thing or two about the history of the word nescience, which evolved from a combination of the Latin prefix ne-, meaning "not," and scire, a verb meaning "to know." And he may also have known that scire is an ancestor of science, a word whose original meaning in English was "knowledge."

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Wow, kind of boggles  the mind! 

Stay tuned for our next "What's the Word?"

#whatstheword by Marjorie Farrington