Today's podictionary word is sophisticated . We think of sophisticated electronics as advanced and technically superior. We think of sophisticated people as benefiting from a wealth of experience.
So why is it that when sophisticated first appeared in English around the time of Shakespeare it meant “not pure” or “not genuine.” Worse, sophistication was actively misleading. Obviously the meaning has changed a bit.
The root of the word is sophist from both Greek and Latin, which meant “wise” and “learned” or “pursuing knowledge,” which is pretty close to what we think of as sophisticated today. Sophist is also at the heart of the word “philosophy,” which translates literally as “lover of knowledge.” More than 2000 years ago two groups of Greek thinkers had a falling out and the philosophers—one of these groups, Pythagoras being one of them—felt that the sophists, the other group—fell to calling each other names. If it's true that the truth will win out then the philosophers must have been right in pegging the sophists as falsely calling themselves wise, because that's the meaning that stuck for about 2200 years until just over 100 years ago when our current meaning reasserted itself.
