Word.ws English Dictionary

incognoscenti

incognoscenti noun: ignorant or uncultured people.

Noun

incognoscenti pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Ignorant or uncultured people.
    • Some incognoscenti grumped when they couldn't find the word in their dictionaries, but there it is in the with-it fourth American Heritage: A word or phrase created because an existing term that was once used alone needs to be distinguished from a term referring to a new development...2007 November 18, William Safire, “Retronymy”, in New York Times

Origin of incognoscenti

As an opposite to cognoscenti.

Questions about incognoscenti

What does incognoscenti mean?
Incognoscenti means ignorant or uncultured people.
What part of speech is incognoscenti?
Incognoscenti is a noun.

Words near incognoscenti in the dictionary

  1. incognitum
  2. incognizability
  3. incognizable
  4. incognizance
  5. incognizant
  6. incognoscenti
  7. incognoscibility
  8. incognoscible
  9. incogs
  10. incoherence
  11. incoherences

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: incognoscenti (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “incognoscenti.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/incognoscenti. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.