Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
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noun
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.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: dated, derogatory, uncountable
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
pretentious superficiality of knowledge
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: superficiality, shallowness
History
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).
Across languages
3 source translations are retained for this English entry.
