sophisticate

英文词源

sophisticate

sophisticate: [14] As those who hanker for the ancestral meanings of words never tire of pointing out, sophisticated originally meant ‘adulterated, corrupted’. The modern approbatory sense ‘worldly-wise, cultured’ did not emerge (via an intermediate ‘lacking primitive or original naturalness or naivety’) until the end of the 19th century; and ‘refined and elaborate’ (as in ‘a sophisticated missile system’) is more recent still, not being recorded until after World War II.

The verb was adapted from the past participle of medieval Latin sophisticāre. This was derived from Latin sophisticus, a borrowing from Greek sophistikós, which in turn was derived from sophistés, a noun which meant literally ‘expert, deviser’, but was also used for a school of 5thcentury BC Greek philosophers (the Sophists) who came to be despised for their specious and intellectually dishonest reasoning (hence English sophistry [14]). Sophistés itself came via sophízesthai ‘play subtle tricks’ from sophós ‘skilled, clever, wise’, a word of unknown origin. Sophomore ‘second-year student’ [17] is an alteration of an earlier sophumer ‘arguer’, a derivative of sophum, which is a now defunct variant of sophism.
=> sophistry, sophomore

sophisticate (v.)

c. 1400, "make impure by admixture," from Medieval Latin sophisticatus, past participle of sophisticare (see sophistication). From c. 1600 as "corrupt, delude by sophistry;" from 1796 as "deprive of simplicity." Related: Sophisticated; sophisticating. As a noun meaning "sophisticated person" from 1921.