IGNORAMUS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Ignoramus

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/ˌɪgnərˈeɪməs/ Listen

noun

Ignoramus n.

(Law) We are ignorant; we ignore; being the word formerly written on a bill of indictment by a grand jury when there was not sufficient evidence to warrant them in finding it a true bill. The phrase now used is, "No bill," "No true bill," or "Not found," though in some jurisdictions "Ignored" is still used.

((pl. ignoramuses)) A stupid, ignorant person; a vain pretender to knowledge; a dunce. "An ignoramus in place and power."

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Etymology of 'Ignoramus'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ignoramus" Quotes from Famous Books

... follows experience instead of dogma, and should therefore be an honorable designation; but as the medical profession has always been dogmatic, and therefore hostile to empiricism, or fidelity to experience, it has made empiricism an opprobrious term. Dr. Mesmer was neither an ignoramus nor a quack, but a graduated physician, although his title is generally omitted. He had more enthusiasm than philosophy, but he was far in advance of his contemporaries, who had neither, and deserves to be ...

— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various

... if I knew it were there. But I do not know where it is. I do not know if it be guarded in a triple- locked iron case by some jealous biblomaniac. I do not know if it be growing mouldy in the attic of some ignoramus. I shudder at the thought that perhaps its tore-out leaves may have been used to cover the pickle-jars of ...

— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... school. Oh, the number of foreign schools I have been at in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing— nothing in the world—I assure you; except that I play and dance beautifully,—and French and German of course I know, to speak; but I can't read or write them very well. Do you know they wanted me to translate a page of an ...

— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... proprietaire and me after this incident, probably owing to the intellectual standard of each becoming somewhat lowered in the other's estimation in consequence of it. Le proprietaire, doubtless, thinks a man capable of leaving the key inside of the door must be the worst type of an ignoramus; and certainly my opinion of him for leaving such a diabolical arrangement unchanged in the latter half of the nineteenth century is not ...

— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... "Come on, unlettered ignoramus," said his master, and, holding the wondering little foundling on his arm, with his rabbit still clutched by the ears, he proceeded down to the roadway, scored like a narrow gray streak through the brush, and plodded onward towards the mining-camp ...

— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

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