quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- agnostic[agnostic 词源字典]
- agnostic: [19] Agnostic is an invented word. It was coined by the English biologist and religious sceptic T H Huxley (1825–95) to express his opposition to the views of religious gnostics of the time, who claimed that the world of the spirit (and hence God) was knowable (gnostic comes ultimately from Greek gnōsis ‘knowledge’). With the addition of the Greek-derived prefix a- ‘not’ Huxley proclaimed the ultimate unknowability of God.
The circumstances of the coinage, or at least of an early instance of the word’s use by its coiner, were recorded by R H Hutton, who was present at a party held by the Metaphysical Society in a house on Clapham Common in 1869 when Huxley suggested agnostic, basing it apparently on St Paul’s reference to the altar of ‘the Unknown God’.
[agnostic etymology, agnostic origin, 英语词源] - acatalepsy
- "Unknowability, incomprehensibility, originally as a characteristic of all things, according to the ancient Sceptics. Hence also: scepticism, profession of ignorance", Mid 17th cent.; earliest use found in Gilbert Watts (d. 1657), Church of England clergyman and translator. From post-classical Latin acatalepsia from Hellenistic Greek ἀκαταληψία impossibility of direct apprehension from ancient Greek ἀκατάληπτος that cannot be reached or touched, in Hellenistic Greek also incomprehensible, not comprehending + -ία; compare -lepsy.