Sciolism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 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. dated, derogatory, uncountable
"Indeed, I ſometimes incline to hope that infidelity is arrived at its higheſt pitch, and that ſcioliſm may advance into found knowledge and ſaving faith […]."
- 2 pretentious superficiality of knowledge wordnet
Example
More examples"Indeed, I ſometimes incline to hope that infidelity is arrived at its higheſt pitch, and that ſcioliſm may advance into found knowledge and ſaving faith […]."
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).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.