For a group of words that comes from the Greek sophistēs, meaning “wise man” or “expert,” these terms collectively express the idea of a very imperfect wisdom.Ī listing of what students were called in early modern England is provided in Randle Holme’s 1688 An Academy of Armory, an authoritative guide to 17th-century society. Indeed, sophister was also used to designate someone who used fallacious reasoning in this sense they were sometimes called sophists and the exercise of deceptive reasoning became known as sophistry. In the 16th century it was often modified with unflattering terms:īecause the word seems to have been used to name those equipped with either wisdom or the lack thereof, it was an apt designation for those in the process of intellectual growth and change: undergraduates. Sophister was used as a synonym of philosopher, but also frequently referred to young and not-yet-wise people whose reasoning was immature. Since the goal of education has always been wisdom, and much of the reading and writing at Cambridge and Oxford was in Greek and Latin, it’s not surprising that a word with classical roots was used to designate students at the oldest universities in England: sophister.
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