English

Adverb

sciolistically ‎(comparative more sciolistically, superlative most sciolistically)

1. In a sciolistic or sciolistical manner; in a manner that shows only superficial knowledge.
   • 1902, The Medical News, volume 80, Philadelphia, Pa.: Henry C. Lea's Son & Co., OCLC 10197508, page 295:

     Weismann sciolistically charges epilepsy to microbes, explaining its greater maternal transmission by the exceedingly crude notion that since the ovum can carry more microbes than the spermatozoon, epilepsy occurs more frequently […]

   • 1917, William Lane, Selections from the Writings of "Tohunga" (William Lane), Auckland: Wilson & Horton, OCLC 21429312, page 6:

     To treat it sciolistically is to forget that, in the beginning, "male and female created He them."

   • 1919, The Athenæum, London: J. Lection, OCLC 15641593, page 1340:

     [O]ne cannot help sympathizing with an author who, in this era of the sciolistically psychological novel, of shallow realisms and valetudinarian introspections, undertakes a novel on wider premises and with the attempt, at least, of a wider view.

   • 1921 March 2, Conrad Aiken, “The Scientific Critic”, in Albert Jay Nock, editor, The Freeman, volume 2, New York, N.Y.: Freeman Inc., OCLC 1157061, page 593:

     If Mr. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot is only intermittently and at times sciolistically a psychologist in his effort toward a scientific method, one must observe also that at the very basis of his attitude, where it is most explicit, in the essay called "The Perfect Critic," he is least scientific.

   • 1944, Leonard Bloomfield, “The Loom of Language. By Frederick Bodmer. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, [1944]. Pp x+692, illustrated. [book review]”, American Speech, volume 19, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, OCLC 42448942, page 211; reprinted in Charles F[rancis] Hockett, editor, A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology, abridged edition, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1987, 978-0-226-06071-2, page 281:

     If one were willing to ignore the tiresome, sciolistically facetious, and repetitious style of this book, its total lack of clarity and structure, and the errors and misunderstandings in which it abounds, there would remain the fact that in the state of its information it lies some decades behind Whitney's excellent popular books […]

   • 1967, George List; Juan Orrego-Salas, editors, Music in the Americas [Inter-American Music Monograph Series; 1], Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, OCLC 836202, page 202:

     Now, I have nothing against this attempt to integrate the art of music in subservience to the art of speech. It is a tradition dating back over 2500 years in Europe and perhaps much farther back in India and China. I do, however, want to see it competently done, not blindly and sciolistically, as is so much of the talking about contemporary music.

   • 1987, The World & I, volume 2, Washington, D.C.: Washington Times Corp., OCLC 646859854, page 647:

     In October 1985, a London Times columnist, David Watt, viewed with alarm American gratification over the capture of the Achille Lauro terrorists. Sciolistically citing [Alexis] de Tocqueville, Watt fancied that American democracy is governed by little more than "a rush of blood to the head."

   • 1989, West Coast Review of Books, volume 15, Rapport Publishing Company, page 132:

     Someone in blackface would pluck a banjo and tell a few jokes, perhaps an itinerant Irish tenor would warble a hungover ballad, then things turned sciolistically scientific as Owen Tully Stratton sallied forth. He would sell various harmless but useless curealls (probably no better or worse than the proprietary medicines of today), […]

Quotations

• For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:sciolistically.

Related terms

• sciolism
• sciolist
• sciolistic
• sciolistical