A man who’s not so handy with computers described himself not as a technophobe, but as a technophyte — a misapprehension of the components of the term neophyte, a word stemming from Greek words meaning “newly planted.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Technophyte”
Since the 16th century, the word neophyte has meant a new convert to a religion. It comes from Greek and Latin roots that mean new and plant originally, and now a neophyte is somebody who’s just new at something.
And I thought about this the other day because I was in a group chat online where a friend was talking about a difficulty that he was having with technology, and he said, oh, I can’t work that out. I’m a technophyte.
And I just thought that was funny, right? Does that work? Fight is a suffix to techno like that? Technically, it doesn’t.
But it did. I mean, we all understood exactly what he meant.
Yeah, he meant a noobie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But he said, I’m a technophyte. And it didn’t catch any of us. We were all thinking, oh, well, he’s having trouble with technology. It’s a misunderstanding of that term.
But I Googled it, and it sure seems like a lot of people are actually making that same mistake. Not a whole lot of people. But they took the wrong part of the word neophyte.
Thank you. That’s what I’m trying to say.
I’m a technophyte. I mean, it sort of makes sense.
A misborrowed.
Yeah, a misunderstanding.
But a technophyte. I do like that as a word for somebody who’s having trouble with technology.
