Obscurantists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group or individuals who deliberately prevent understanding or knowledge from being accessible
2. those who advocate for the withholding of information to maintain confusion or ignorance
3. people who challenge enlightenment by promoting the idea that not all knowledge should be shared

Etymology: The obscurantists were, in the nineteenth century, a label for those who opposed the spread of learning. The word comes from "obscurant," itself a noun formed from the Latin "obscurare," meaning "to darken" or "to make dim," and the suffix "-ist," which marks a person who holds to or practises a particular doctrine. The suffix's own ancestry runs back through Old French and Latin to Ancient Greek "-istēs," an agent ending that turned action words into names for the people who carry them out. The Latin root gives "obscure" its literal sense of dark or shadowed, so an obscurant was one who kept things in the dark. In English the word was built on the same pattern as "realist" or "moralist," so its meaning comes from the stem and the suffix together: a person who keeps knowledge dim rather than letting it be seen.

Synonyms: ignorant, dullard, blockhead

Antonyms: enlightened, informed