See scientician on Wiktionary
{ "etymology_text": "The word has existed since the 19th century, when it began as a term for the concept that later would nearly universally be called scientist in English. But in the late 20th and early 21st century, the word has mostly been used as a joke implying suspect credentials or pseudoscience. The joke operates on the fact that scientist is the only current idiomatic term for a scientist and that scientician sounds like a word that a biased party (e.g., a corporate or government PR mouthpiece) would use while trying to mislead the audience while escaping liability because if it were questioned then they could lawyer their way out of liability technically by saying, \"I never said scientist.\" This comic use of the word was popularized by a 1995 episode of The Simpsons called \"Lisa the Vegetarian\".", "forms": [ { "form": "scienticians", "tags": [ "plural" ] } ], "head_templates": [ { "args": {}, "expansion": "scientician (plural scienticians)", "name": "en-noun" } ], "lang": "English", "lang_code": "en", "pos": "noun", "related": [ { "_dis1": "0 0", "word": "Scientologist" } ], "senses": [ { "categories": [], "examples": [ { "text": "Near-synonym: pseudoscientist" }, { "ref": "1995, David X. Cohen, “Lisa the Vegetarian”, in The Simpsons, season 7, episode 5:", "text": "Smarmy Marlboro Man–like spokesman: Just ask this scientician. [Cut away to a man in a lab coat, in front of a microscope, who opens his mouth as he is about to begin speaking. Then cut away again.] Smarmy Marlboro Man–like spokesman: He'll tell you that […]", "type": "quote" } ], "glosses": [ "Someone with the trappings of science who is probably not a true scientist." ], "id": "en-scientician-en-noun-sLcTre2G", "links": [ [ "humorous", "humorous" ], [ "trappings", "trappings" ], [ "science", "science" ], [ "scientist", "scientist" ] ], "raw_glosses": [ "(humorous) Someone with the trappings of science who is probably not a true scientist." ], "tags": [ "humorous" ] }, { "categories": [ { "_dis": "17 83", "kind": "other", "name": "English entries with incorrect language header", "parents": [ "Entries with incorrect language header", "Entry maintenance" ], "source": "w+disamb" }, { "_dis": "12 88", "kind": "other", "name": "Pages with 1 entry", "parents": [], "source": "w+disamb" }, { "_dis": "7 93", "kind": "other", "name": "Pages with entries", "parents": [], "source": "w+disamb" } ], "glosses": [ "Synonym of scientist." ], "id": "en-scientician-en-noun-jT0Idk49", "links": [ [ "scientist", "scientist#English" ] ], "raw_glosses": [ "(archaic) Synonym of scientist." ], "synonyms": [ { "tags": [ "synonym", "synonym-of" ], "word": "scientist" } ], "tags": [ "archaic" ] } ], "word": "scientician" }
{ "categories": [ "English countable nouns", "English entries with incorrect language header", "English lemmas", "English nouns", "Pages with 1 entry", "Pages with entries" ], "etymology_text": "The word has existed since the 19th century, when it began as a term for the concept that later would nearly universally be called scientist in English. But in the late 20th and early 21st century, the word has mostly been used as a joke implying suspect credentials or pseudoscience. The joke operates on the fact that scientist is the only current idiomatic term for a scientist and that scientician sounds like a word that a biased party (e.g., a corporate or government PR mouthpiece) would use while trying to mislead the audience while escaping liability because if it were questioned then they could lawyer their way out of liability technically by saying, \"I never said scientist.\" This comic use of the word was popularized by a 1995 episode of The Simpsons called \"Lisa the Vegetarian\".", "forms": [ { "form": "scienticians", "tags": [ "plural" ] } ], "head_templates": [ { "args": {}, "expansion": "scientician (plural scienticians)", "name": "en-noun" } ], "lang": "English", "lang_code": "en", "pos": "noun", "related": [ { "word": "Scientologist" } ], "senses": [ { "categories": [ "English humorous terms", "English terms with quotations" ], "examples": [ { "text": "Near-synonym: pseudoscientist" }, { "ref": "1995, David X. Cohen, “Lisa the Vegetarian”, in The Simpsons, season 7, episode 5:", "text": "Smarmy Marlboro Man–like spokesman: Just ask this scientician. [Cut away to a man in a lab coat, in front of a microscope, who opens his mouth as he is about to begin speaking. Then cut away again.] Smarmy Marlboro Man–like spokesman: He'll tell you that […]", "type": "quote" } ], "glosses": [ "Someone with the trappings of science who is probably not a true scientist." ], "links": [ [ "humorous", "humorous" ], [ "trappings", "trappings" ], [ "science", "science" ], [ "scientist", "scientist" ] ], "raw_glosses": [ "(humorous) Someone with the trappings of science who is probably not a true scientist." ], "tags": [ "humorous" ] }, { "categories": [ "English terms with archaic senses" ], "glosses": [ "Synonym of scientist." ], "links": [ [ "scientist", "scientist#English" ] ], "raw_glosses": [ "(archaic) Synonym of scientist." ], "synonyms": [ { "tags": [ "synonym", "synonym-of" ], "word": "scientist" } ], "tags": [ "archaic" ] } ], "word": "scientician" }
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.