'On Matters Beyond One’s Knowledge'

At last, the word we have been waiting for: ultracrepidarian. In our post-everything era, we have officially entered the Age of Ultracrepidarianism. Thanks go to Dave Lull for the introduction. Here is the OED’s definition of the adjective form: “Going beyond one’s proper province; giving opinions on matters beyond one’s knowledge.” Even the humblest among us are guilty on occasion. It’s an annoying sin personified by a familiar figure: the guy at the end of the bar who knows everything. He defines himself by his opinions and his enthusiasm for imposing them on others. But he’s a piker compared to his co-opinionators armed with Twitter accounts.

In theory, Twitter is a marvelous tool, a handy way to share interesting things. Even without an account of my own I follow several Twitter sites kept by people with interesting minds. I’m reminded of what Guy Davenport writes in the introductory note to The Hunter Gracchus (1996): “I am not writing for scholars or fellow critics, but for people who like to read, to look at pictures, and to know things.” I operate on the assumption that the least interesting thing I can know about you is your opinion of anything. Tell me what you know, what you've lived. Too often, opinions camouflage nullity. Hot air masks a vacuum. If you’re an immunologist, I may want to hear what you have to say about the complexities of COVID-19. Otherwise, keep a lid on it.

Go here to read a brief history of ultracrepidarian. The coiner, unsurprisingly, is William Hazlitt, one of literature’s deftest opinion-puncturers. The neologism shows up in his demolition of the now-forgotten literary journalist William Gifford: “You have been well called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic.” Hazlitt’s elegant dismissal of Gifford is bracing: “His slow, snail-paced, bed-rid habits of reasoning cannot keep up with the whirling, eccentric motion, the rapid, perhaps extravagant combinations of modern literature.”

Leigh Hunt took Hazlitt’s evisceration of Gifford to the next logical level and wrote “Ultra-Crepidarius. A Satire on William Gifford.” Dave has unearthed speculation that the ultimate source of ultracrepidarian is Charles Lamb, called by Hunt “one of the humblest as well as noblest spirits that exist.” Of course, it was Lamb who wrote of Wordsworth: “He says he does not see much difficulty in writing like Shakespeare, if he had a mind to try it. It is clear, then, that nothing is wanting but the mind.”