# epistemic

Pronunciation: US say "ep-uh-STEE-mik" /ˌɛpəˈstimɪk/; UK say "ep-i-STEE-mik" /ˌɛpɪˈstiːmɪk/

## Adjective

1. Relating to knowledge or cognition, including its scope and how it is acquired; relating to epistemology, the study of knowledge.
   - Simple: Having to do with knowledge and how we come to know things.
   - _Philosophers separate epistemic questions about what we can know from questions about what actually exists._
   - _When every side has its own facts, a democracy faces an epistemic problem as well as a political one._
2. Relating to the ways language expresses knowledge or cognition.
   - Simple: Having to do with how words show what a speaker knows or thinks.
   - _Modal verbs such as might and must often carry an epistemic meaning, signaling how confident the speaker is._
   - _The study compares epistemic markers in English and Japanese conversation._

## Origin

From Ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistḗmē, "knowledge; science") + the English adjective suffix -ic. Epistḗmē comes from ἐπίσταμαι (epístamai, "to know"), built from epi- "on, on top of" and ἵστημι (hístēmi, "to stand"), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- "to stand".

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/epistemic (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).