Sofister

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who argues cleverly but deceptively, using subtle reasoning that is unsound ; a student in the middle years of undergraduate study at Trinity College Dublin
2. One who relies on ingenious yet misleading argument to win a point ; a second or third year undergraduate at Trinity College Dublin, after the freshman year
3. A subtle but specious debater, skilled at deceptive reasoning ; an intermediate-year undergraduate at Trinity College Dublin, as distinct from a junior freshman

Etymology: "Sophister" is an Early Modern English word for a clever, often dishonest arguer, and its story begins with the Greek "sophistes," which simply meant a wise man or expert, someone skilled in a craft or in learning. In fifth-century Athens, the sophists were paid teachers of rhetoric and argument, and Plato's dialogues turned the word sour by portraying them as men who could make the weaker case seem the stronger. The English word arrived through Latin "sophista" and Old French, first appearing in the sixteenth century. The spelling "sophister" is itself a sign of the older meaning. For centuries, English universities used "sophister" as a term for a second-year undergraduate at Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin, a student who was expected to dispute and argue in formal disputations. The pejorative sense of a fallacious reasoner grew from the same root, so the word still carries both the pupil's training in argument and the suspicion that clever argument can deceive.