Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Pseudoscience Word of the Day: Blinkered

Blinkered is a cool word. You can use this word every day in many situations. The advantage of this word is that it is archaic and therefore few people remember what it means.

The word is related to horse blinders, the funky pirate patch things they use to control horses so that they ignore everything except for what is in front of them. This is much more subtle than shouting: "You have blinders on!"

Blinkered translates to people in terms of limited outlook and ignoring evidence. You could say, 'small minded', but the subtle choice is 'blinkered' and you don't even need to say it under your breath or look both ways for the target of your scorn.

Here is a link to a dictionary definition: Blinkered
Here is a link to its use in an article at Wired where I found the use of the word: Accept Defeat: The Science of Screwing Up

You can now consider yourself properly educated on a very important pseudoscience term. You many now go out and play!