Ignoramus

Posted by Smokey Stover on April 14, 2005

In Reply to: Ignoramus posted by R. Berg on April 13, 2005

: : : "An ignoramous and his lucre are readily disjoined". What does that mean please?

: : It is a play on words and means--"A fool and his money are easily ( seperated ) parted".

: : A "fool" is a person who is always joking and doing stupid things.

: : And if a fool does not look after his money and watch it then someone may take it while the fool is joking around.

: Information for those who aren't native English speakers: "A fool and his money are soon parted" is an old proverb. I always understood it to mean that a person without common sense is easily cheated.

Easily cheated, or just inclined to do something foolish with his money. Have you ever wondered how a L@tin very coule become an English noun? I looked it up in OED: "[L., = 'we do not know', (in legal use) 'we take no notice of [it]'.]
{dagger}1. The endorsement formerly made by a Grand Jury upon a bill or indictment presented to them, when they considered the evidence for the prosecution insufficient to warrant the case going to a petty jury. Hence quasi-n. or ellipt., esp. in the phrases to find, return, bring in (an) ignoramus; more rarely in passive, to be found, returned ignoramus. Also transf. an answer which admits ignorance of the point in question; fig. a state of ignorance.
(The words now used in the finding of the Grand Jury are 'not a true bill', or 'not found' or 'no bill'.) [Exx. omitted by me.]
2. An ignorant person.
[In reference to the origin of this, cf. Ruggle's Ignoramus (acted 1615) 'written to expose the ignorance and arrogance of the common lawyers', in which 'Ignoramus' is the name of a lawyer. The word occurs also in the following title, evidently in legal connexion: 'The Case and Arguments against Sir Ignoramus, of Cambridge, in his Readings at Staple's Inn', by R. Callis, Serjeant at Law ...." SS