ignorance
- 1The state of lacking knowledge or information, whether about a particular matter or through a lack of education.
Public ignorance of basic financial concepts leaves many people vulnerable to scams.
The report blamed the outbreak partly on widespread ignorance about how the disease spreads.
Similarunawareness, cluelessness, unknowingness
Oppositeknowledge, awareness, understanding, enlightenment
Note
The everyday word for not knowing came through Middle English ignoraunce and Old French from Latin ignōrantia, though today it reads naturally as ignore plus -ance. It takes of or about for what is unknown, as in total ignorance about the topic. The frame in my ignorance lets a writer admit a past misjudgment, as Ernest Hemingway does in A Moveable Feast (1964).
- 2A fundamental blindness to the true nature of existence; a deep failure to perceive reality as it actually is.
The sutras teach that all suffering arises from ignorance of the way things truly are.
She described awakening as the moment ignorance falls away and reality appears as it is.
Oppositeenlightenment, awakening, wisdom, insight
- 3Sins committed unknowingly, through a lack of knowledge of what is right rather than through deliberate intent.
The congregation prayed that their ignorance might be pardoned along with their willful sins.
Old Testament law prescribed different sacrifices for ignorance than for defiant transgression.
Note
A religious usage that turns a condition into countable acts. In the plural, ignorances are the individual wrongs a person committed without knowing they were wrong. The plural is the clearest signal: as a mass noun the word usually means plain lack of knowledge, while ignorances in a prayer or confession names the sins themselves, set apart from those committed knowingly.
Practice
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Origin
This word came into Middle English from Old French "ignorance," which came from Latin "ignorantia." It can be seen as "ignore" plus the ending "-ance."