Scio
Published: 2021-11-11The Latin word sciō means “I know”. Science is one of the best examples with this origin. In this post, let me show you some more words that are derived from sciō.
conscious, conscience
Conscious comes from the Latin word “conscius” meaning “sharing knowledge”, since the prefix “con-“ here means “together”. Conscius also means “privy to a crime” or “inwardly aware”, which helps us understand the meaning of conscious.
Conscience is the sense of right and wrong. This word has the Latin etymon “conscientia” meaning “holding of knowledge in common”, which explains its association with knowledge and why it has the prefix con-.
The adjective “conscient” exists in English and basically means “conscious”, by the way (pretty confusing, isn’t it?). Just to be clear, the adjective form of conscience is conscientious, while the noun form of conscious is consciousness.
omniscient
As you probably know, the prefix “omni-“ means “in all ways” or something like this (e.g. omnibus, omniactive, omnipotent, etc). Thus, omniscient1 means “all-knowing” or “having extensive knowledge” hyperbolically.
prescient
Prescient means “knowing what will happen in the future”. This makes perfect sense with the prefix “pre-“ meaning “in advance”.
nescient, inscient
Nescient2 means “not having knowledge about something”. Inscient means almost the same thing (though it is rare today). I don’t think I need to explain these.