Of Knowledge and Over Confidence by Konnie Enos

Not only am I a college-educated person, but I grew up in a household with a person we affectionately nicknamed Dictionary. This is because she loved to read the dictionary and learn new words, which she took great pleasure in teaching to us, her younger sisters. We, of course, eagerly soaked up as much of her knowledge as we could.

We became accustomed to using the big, fancy words she taught us. This is very evident in all the early drafts of Bonnie’s work. As are the long wordy sentences. I’ve had to work hard with her to tone it down because her early draft writing tends to come off as more erudite than the general population of fiction readers. (Yes, I know what erudite means, and yes, I don’t generally use such big words.)

Since this is our background, I have often come across people who do not know words I consider to be common.

As an example, when I was newly wed (over thirty years ago) I was having a conversation with Jerry, my husband, and said something evidently about either mine or my husband’s siblings. With that one word, siblings, I confused Jerry to the point he had to stop me and ask what it meant. I was flabbergasted that anyone as old as we were didn’t know that simple word.

I have since learned that there are a lot of words we consider to be everyday words that others have never heard, or at least not retained a knowledge of them. I’m sure Bonnie and I could, together, come up with multiple times in our lives we have learned someone didn’t have the same knowledge of words that we do.

Now in the same vein, I have in my lifetime learned new words, generally when said words were added to our lexicon. Such as all the words we’ve added in my lifetime because of advances in technology, such as ‘internet’.

I have, however, not encountered a new word that has been in the dictionary for longer than my lifetime since I was a teenager. So I would consider such an event noteworthy.

So, several months ago when Melinda, the youngest of my beautiful daughters, used a word I’d never heard of I was stunned. At the time, we had a brief conversation about it and its meaning which included the fact that it was in the dictionary. I did not check. I assumed she would not tease me in this manner or lie about it.

I did, however, mull it over and decided it was a much easier word to use than what it replaces. Only then did I decide to look it up. You can do so yourself on dictionary.com.

The word in question is nibbling. It is essentially the same kind of word that sibling is. While sibling is gender neutral for bother or sister, nibbling is gender neutral for niece or nephew. When you are writing about brothers and sisters or nieces and nephews it’d be a lot easier, and less wordy, to use siblings or nibblings.

And, though the word nibblings was added to the lexicon in the last century, it is still older than Bonnie and I are. According to Dictionary.com, it was coined by U.S. linguist Samuel E. Martin in 1951. So in our parents’ lifetime, but well before ours.

Now for something which isn’t as surprising as it should be. Tony, the oldest of my sons, was talking to me not long ago (but after I happened to look it up) and mentioned he’d seen some post on the internet somewhere (Reddit maybe) where the word nibblings was used and someone else informed them that it wasn’t a word. This person even told them to read a dictionary.

Obviously, he is the person who needs to read a dictionary.

Of course, that got me and my three children at home into an entire conversation about know-it-alls online that can’t seem to comprehend that they aren’t as smart as they think they are. Such as all the posts that are asking readers to solve simple algebraic equations and most of the responses show a clear lack of understanding of PEMDAS.

In this day and age when information is easy to locate, why are there still people who think they know it all? If you can’t be bothered to check, or double-check, your information then you probably remember less than you thought.

One thing I do know is that by stating any information with total confidence and a bit of a condescending attitude, you come off as an idiotic jerk.  Personally, I know my data bank has been corrupted with age. I don’t tend to state things with confidence unless I’ve looked it up.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.