If someone called you a sciolist in the 17th century, that was a pretty harsh burn — it meant you were getting called out for pretending to know more than you did. The word “sciolist” comes from the Latin “scrire,” meaning “to know,” but there’s always been a sarcastic bent to the term. From its inception, it denoted a person who pretended to be more knowledgeable than they really were. While it’s an obscure word to use today, it has its modern uses. In the “Financial Times” in 1973: “Any identification of the Smithian system with this point of view is a sure sign of the sciolist or the charlatan.”