nescience

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 2, 2010 is: nescience • \NESH-ee-unss\ • noun : lack of knowledge or awareness : ignorance Examples: "[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." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.