Ultracrepidarian

[…]like a conceited mechanic in a village ale-house, you would set down every one who differs from you as an ignorant blockhead; and very fairly infer that any one who is beneath yourself must be nothing. You have been well called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic.

[Inspector Queen] was the only person in New York who might be called, without intent to malign, an Ultracrepidarian critic. It was of the very nature of his job to find fault with small and insignificant details.

Suitably daunted by ultracrepidarian angst, I record here some tentative readings in rhetoric's expanded domain and venture a few preliminary observations on their relation to the electronic word.

In a sense, the ‘scientistic’ polemicist who stumbles across unseen disciplinary boundaries in an ultracrepidarian stupor is not always entirely in the wrong; there are now in fact contested territories where the dissonances are quite real.