What's a word that means "not omniscient"? [closed]
What's a word that means "not knowing everything"? This would serve as a complementary antonym of omniscient, which means having infinite knowledge, or simply "all-knowing".
Thesaurus.com shows these possible words:
- stupid (opposite of being clever, which ≠ being omniscient)
- unknowing (opposite of being knowing, which ≠ being omniscient)
- fallible (opposite of being infallible, which means "not able to make mistakes", which ≠ being omniscient, since I can know everything and still make mistakes)
- erring (which means "capable of making mistakes", which ≠ being omniscient, since I can know everything and still make mistakes)
- imperfect (opposite of being perfect, which is a superset of being omniscient... how could I be perfect if I'm both omniscient and fallible?)
- faulty (which means "to have fault(s) / defect(s)", is the opposite of "to have no fault(s) / defect(s)", which means being perfect, which ≠ being omniscient)
- ignorant (which means "having inadequate knowledge", is the opposite of "having adequate knowledge", which ≠ having infinite knowledge)
- uneducated (opposite of being educated, which ≠ being omniscient)
- unaware (opposite of being aware, which ≠ being omniscient)
- uninformed (opposite of being informed, which ≠ being omniscient)
Yet, none of them are true antonyms for omniscient. Is there an alternative?
According to reference.com, the Random House dictionary registers unomniscient as a legitimate word. There are a handful of hits on Google Books which include the following examples:
Chaucer deepens Jean de Meun's joke about the God's ersatz divinity: immediately after the God has just issued some clearly unomniscient judgments ...
If at every world, God knows at that world only the propositions whose truth-values are modally constant, then it would seem that God is necessarily unomniscient.
There are actually two types of unomniscient focus, since the narrator may know the same as or even less than the characters.
The impossibility of an unomniscient intelligence demonstrating the supposed contradiction, and thus transforming our universe into an untrustworthy universe, with which one can have no intercourse, is the attitude primarily assumed towards ...
Also of interest is the term bounded rationality:
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision-making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision.
Ignorant may suffice:
ODO on ignorant
adjective
1 lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated
The struggle seems to be with finding a word that means "some-knowing" that is negative enough to imply that all knowledge is the norm without implying that the object has inadequate knowledge on a simple level.
Bit of a cheat perhaps, but you consider some basic antonyms using prefixes, such as non-omniscient or, preferable for me I think, inomniscient.
Alternatively, quasi- means "appearing to be, but not", so depending on context perhaps quasi-omniscient.
"agnostic" and "grossly ignorant" in certain contexts can be used to mean the opposite of "omniscient"
"agnostic":
noun
- a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.
adjective
- asserting the uncertainty of all claims to knowledge.
The phrase "blank slate" or "tabula rasa" means being completely without knowledge, although it's usually used in discussions of how humans learn.