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Sophomoric

(pronounced sof-mawr-ik or sof-uh-mawr-ik or sof-uh-mor-ik)  adjective

Definition

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of a sophomore. 2. indicative of the typical sophomore; conceited with regard to the merit of one’s own opinions; pretentious and overconfident (of knowledge, skill, etc.) but immature and displaying poor judgment; juvenile; cocky.

Main Example

• All those postmortems that followed the Oscar night snafu, when “La La Land” was wrongly announced as the best picture winner, have laid the blame squarely on that PwC executive who, seemingly, was so smitten by Emma Stone that he handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. But what happened to all the expected checks and balances? For instance, why didn’t Beatty and Dunaway look at the outside of the envelope (which clearly had “Best Actress” typed on it) as they were preparing to walk in, just to be sure they had the correct one? And after noticing that the envelope contained the announcement for best actress and not best movie, why didn’t either of them motion to one of the officials positioned on the side of the dais to indicate something was wrong? The 2017 Oscar ceremony will long be remembered as the Motion Picture Academy’s most sophomoric hour.

Workplace Examples

• The questions I faced after my presentation today were really smart and challenged my thinking. What a contrast to yesterday’s audience; after I made the same presentation, most of the questions were sophomoric and rather insulting to one’s intelligence.
• I’ve just finished reading through this proposal and am stunned by how flimsy some of the assumptions are. Several of the arguments and plan targets are so silly and sophomoric, they wouldn’t pass muster even with someone who had scant familiarity with the workings of our industry.

Other Examples

• this author saying: “Every election season, I see some pretty sophomoric TV spots for candidates seeking local political office. During the first 95% of the commercial, you’ll see the candidate looking stiff and speaking in a very boring, uninspiring manner. And then, just at the end, as if on cue, he’ll suddenly raise his voice and thrust out his hand, asking people for their vote. Very immaturish!”
• a sophomoric analysis; the CEO pooh-poohing the sophomoric assumptions contained in an investment proposal; a corporate event turning out to be a fiasco, thanks to sophomoric planning; the sophomoric battling that sometimes occurs in the two houses of Congress; the stock market’s sophomoric overreactions to tiny ups and downs in the price of oil and other economic numbers
• in 2003, the sophomoric thinking and sophomoric perspective that prevailed among some in Washington who believed that a thriving democracy would take root in Iraq the moment the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein was dethroned
• in the opinion of this author, some of the humor in the 2006 box office hit “Borat--Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” being so crude and coarse that it would be an insult to our teenagers and young adults to describe it as sophomoric

© 2017 V.J. Singal
No part of this may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the author.