Ultracrepidarianism

An ultracrepidarian is a person who offers opinions beyond their own knowledge. When someone speaks as an authority on a subject that they have only limited knowledge of.

I see this happening regularly - but I think there are some social aspects here.

Let me give an example -

In my friends circle, there are several teens, all the families come to me for any education/career advice.

My husband's closest friend calls me database - but for any advice he will call DH first to talk, rant, discuss and dissect - and he comes to me only once his head is clear and he knows what he is looking for. So till then my DH is being forced into the role of an ultracrepidarian.


Another example -

Take 2 couples - Couple A fight a lot, Couple B listens to their rants, discuss and dissect the couple A's marriage - and give advice like an ultracrepidarian.

The fighting couple A follows the advice partially, have some good moments, but are not consistent, never tell this to couple B but come back to rant about the next fight!

Couple B finally starts to tell them - We are done advising you, you are never consistent, please go to a counsellor/psychiatrist - but couple A keep coming back to couple B to complain and rant about their spouses!
Here couple A is expecting couple B to be the ultracrepidarians!

I feel ultracrepidarian is a fancy name for a sounding board.
Ultracrepidarians are made ultracrepidarians by the people who are asking them the questions that are beyond their capacity!


Note: I saw a new word and gave myself homework to write 5 sentences using the word ! Checklist done for the day

Keep smiling
HR

 

OMG!!!!!!!!! I took more time to read the titl of this thread than the thread itself. Yes the know-all guys are a plague but the world is swarming with them. There are more people who THINK that they know than those who actually know.

 

"I don't know: don't know what you say" - the phrase turned popular with the song "therray marey beechmay" from Ek Tuje Keliyae.

In tamil nadu when a stranger asks for direction, few would only gesture by hand "go forward". One person like this advised going only forward had reached Tirupathi instead of Thanjavur.
This phrase " I don't know" rings a bell of one's experience when he from one state travels into another.

"Nangu Gothilla" in karnataka.
"Humko or mujay - malum nahi" in Maharashtra.
"Meeku theliyaledhu " in Andhra Pradesh & so on.

The worst that can happen to one who listen to such advise from only one stranger-person and proceeds is that he would be proceeding exactly in the opposite direction.
Imagine when deaf persons acts like Ultracrepidarians and render such advise..

 

that is nice way not only adding new words to one's vocab but also for remembering and retrieving when required.
Our recognition vocab may be several times larger than functional one. Many words one tend to use while writing but not or never in speech.
When a friend was negotiating left instead of right, his friend sitting next told " no no don't turn to left. It is culdesac". That man is mon ami from France. Trust we text from chez nou.
Thanks and regards.

 

Dear Hari Sir,

Thank you for writing this snippet. What you say is true in the religious and spiritual fields as well. They could completely misdirect people seeking advice. Any suggestion to blindly follow the spiritual or religious leader is a fallacy as inquiry is the best path to discriminate right from wrong.

"I don't know" is the best sentence for people who are willing to learn more and there is no age limit. Sometimes, age prohibits people from admitting that they don't know something. I was CFO of a premier R & D organization in India when I was 34 and most engineers who worked for this R & D organization were fresh out of college. They learned in the job about how to build hardware and software for parallel computing applications and they shared so much with all of us. Our curiosity made us read and discuss so much with these young brilliant minds. As long as one is willing to listen irrespective of age, many doors are open to learning more and more as learning is a life-long exercise.

The word is complex and practicing it can cause considerable havoc and create a learning disability.