Triskaidekalogophilia

by Peter Saint-Andre

2007-04-13

I just added two more words to my Wordie list: omphaloskepsis and ultracrepidarian. Are they cool or what?

Omphaloskepsis comes from the ancient Greek words for navel and sight, thus resulting in a fancy word for navel-gazing.

The roots of ultracrepidarian are a bit more complex (well-explained here), but the meaning has more bite: "going beyond one's area of knowledge". Thus we could say that Al Gore was a classic ultracrepidarian when he made "An Inconvenient Truth" -- just because he invented the Internet doesn't mean he's an expert on climatology. ;-)


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