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Help please! I would like to use the term "willful ignorance" in an essay I am writing, but would like to know the etymology, precise definition, correct usage, who coined the term, and other language info before I do. I have searched all the sources available to me. Respond to this site and/or my email sathering@wisc.edu Thank you!
Welcome.
I am sorry to say that you are unlikely to come up with a first use, or a person who coined the phrase. The Online Etymological Dictionary references earlier uses of willful, but notes that the use with a bad connotation meaning "on purpose" as in your question dates back to c.1374. Both willfulness and ignorance have been around for so long, and work so well together, that they are likely to have been paired in phrases at least since then.
Perhaps the popularization of the phrase in English was inspired by this verse in the King James (Authorized) Version of the Bible (C. 1611 – Second Epistle of Peter 3:5):
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, … .
Clearly the concepts were closely linked by the first century, and the linkage is expressed in other languages before English comes into existence.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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