Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Absence of knowledge or awareness; ignorance.
  • noun Agnosticism.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of not knowing; lack of knowledge; ignorance.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Want of knowledge; ignorance; agnosticism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The absence of knowledge; ignorance, especially of orthodox beliefs.
  • noun philosophy The doctrine that nothing is actually knowable.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun ignorance (especially of orthodox beliefs)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin nescientia, from Latin nesciēns, nescient-, present participle of nescīre, to be ignorant : ne-, not; see ne in Indo-European roots + scīre, to know; see skei- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin nescientia, from the present participle of nescire.

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