ultracrepidarianism

I’ve always felt like my vocabulary is a bit weak. I like words, but I just don’t know a lot of them that other people I run into know. But here is a doozy I read about last month: ultracrepidarian.

What does it mean? Dictionary.com defines it like this:

noting or pertaining to a person who criticizes, judges, or gives advice outside their area of expertise

You’ve probably run into people like that, even if you didn’t know the name for it. Personally, I think I encounter more ultracrepidarians online than in the real world. And our current president seems to surround himself with ultracrepidarians. (personally, I think he can’t tell the difference between someone saying they’re an expert in a topic and that person really being an expert in the topic, but I digress)

The word has a really interesting origin! I’m just gonna quote Wikipedia’s entry because their telling of the story is so good.

The phrase is recorded in Book 35 of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History [written around 77 AD] as ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret (“Let the cobbler not judge beyond the crepida”) and ascribed to the Greek painter Apelles of Kos. Supposedly, Apelles would put new paintings on public display and hide behind them to hear and act on their reception.On one occasion, a shoemaker (Latin sutor) noted that one of the crepides [that’s a type of sandal in ancient times, I guess] in a painting had the wrong number of straps and was so delighted when he found the error corrected the next day that he started in on criticizing the legs. Indignant, Apelles came from his hiding place and admonished him to confine his opinions to the shoes.

By the way, Pliny’s Natural History is the largest surviving book from the Roman Empire.

Anyhow, next time you find yourself offering criticism or advice outside your area of expertise, remember the word. You are engaging in ultracrepidarianism!

(for example, if you should wake up tomorrow morning to realize you are a game show host delving dangerously into international tariff policy)

Side Note: Today I also got the Tags and Categories feature of my blog site working. See at the bottom of the post (after the comment section) how it says “Words”? That’s a link. Click it and you’ll see a list of other posts that I have categorized as being about words. And if you click the Categories or Tags links in the navigation bar, you’ll see a page that shows all the categories and tags for all my posts ever. That can really take you down a rabbit hole. For example, you can learn that I have posted 12 recipes over the years.