Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Destitute of knowledge; ignorant; characterized by or exhibiting nescience.

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

  • noun an ignorant person
  • noun an unbeliever
  • adjective ignorant, unlearned
  • adjective unbelieving

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

  • adjective holding that only material phenomena can be known and knowledge of spiritual matters or ultimate causes is impossible
  • adjective uneducated in general; lacking knowledge or sophistication

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Because, in my opinion, nescient arm-chair security analysts with an axe to grind sure as hell shouldn't be able to declassify thousands of government documents and unfetter them into cyberspace.

    Michael Hughes: WikiStan: Do We Want Julian Assange on That Wall? 2010

  • Because, in my opinion, nescient arm-chair security analysts with an axe to grind sure as hell shouldn't be able to declassify thousands of government documents and unfetter them into cyberspace.

    Michael Hughes: WikiStan: Do We Want Julian Assange on That Wall? 2010

  • I eagerly await the daily deployment of “nescient.”

    Matthew Yglesias » Chilly! 2007

  • Massive post-war unemployment was fast becoming a crippling political problem for the British government, as was the realisation that perhaps the greatest threat to international stability was the narrow minded, nescient Versailles Peace Treaty effected in 1919.

    Eraser Wars | SciFi, Fantasy & Horror Collectibles 2009

  • Is the nescient administration backpedaling under the pressure of big pharma and the deny care at will insurance money?

    Excuse me, but is that change backpedaling? 2009

  • If you get a good script, a decently good director who has deflated his ego, a committed studio and crew willing to collaborate and work in tangent, and even challenge gifted directors choices, everyone working together could possibly put together something that will make little boys and large googly eyed big boys come back for more, by giving them something that has a nescient chance of flowering into a cash cow franchise.

    Lionsgate's Conan Movie on the Fast Track with New Writers « FirstShowing.net 2008

  • Just when you thought the quality of British sports journalism could not sink any lower, out pops The Observer's Eddie Butler with a wonderfully nescient piece of writing.

    Archive 2005-12-01 RICHARD 2005

  • Just when you thought the quality of British sports journalism could not sink any lower, out pops The Observer's Eddie Butler with a wonderfully nescient piece of writing.

    British Hacks Truly World Class RICHARD 2005

  • I believe this is in retaliation for all the nescient liturgical nonsense that I've been trying to ingest the past few days.

    chewing on clouds impetuousme 2004

  • The columns were of different substances; some of handsome marble, others of rough stone meanly plastered over, with dissimilar capitals, vulgarly cut shafts of various sizes; here with a pediment, there without, now turned upside down, then joined together by halves in the centre, and almost invariably nescient of intercolumnar rule.

    Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah 2003

Comments

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  • As Dala's most devious reflection might put it, the enthusiasm of the audience was as affectively as it was infectiously unanimous, no omniscient observer who had not become nescient.

    - Louis Zukofsky, Little

    June 20, 2008

  • Wow, what a find. This will be useful in my regular philosophical discussions. I envision referring to my companions' "nescient points of view".

    June 10, 2009