Word of the Day

: July 2, 2010

nescience

noun NESH-ee-unss

What It Means

: lack of knowledge or awareness : ignorance

nescience in Context

"[Samuel] Johnson was so vexed by a young clergyman's nescience that he complained, 'His ignorance is so great, I am afraid to show him the bottom of it.'" (Barry Baldwin, Verbatim, June 22, 2003)

Did You Know?

Eighteenth-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."