Academic

Word of the day: Ultracrepidarianism

By Kevin Maillard

From Wikipedia, with happy disregard for the authenticity of it's sources.

Ultracrepidarianism is the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge.

The term ultracrepidarian was first publicly recorded in 1819 by the essayist William Hazlitt in a letter to William Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review.^[1]: "You have been well called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic."^[2] It was used again four years later in 1823, in the satire by Hazlitt's friend Leigh Hunt, Ultra-Crepidarius: a Satire on William Gifford.

The term draws from a famous comment purportedly made by Apelles, a famous Greek artist to a shoemaker who presumed to criticise his painting.^[3] The Latin phrase, "Ne supra crepidam judicaret", as set down by Pliny and later altered by other Latin writers to "Ne ultra crepidam judicaret", can be taken to mean that a shoemaker ought not to judge beyond his own soles. That is to say, critics should only comment on things they know something about.^[4]

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on June 06, 2009 (boomark / email).