A quick look into a dictionary will confirm what many people already know; that a sophomore is someone in their second year of college or in their second year at high school.

Someone in their first year is a freshman and these terms go back at least 320 years.

A freshman is pretty self explanatory but a sophomore sounds a little more classical in origin.

Back in 1688 a man named Randle Holme wrote and published a series of books about things he knew best.  His father and his father’s father before him had been herald painters by profession.

That means that they were licensed by the King to keep track of which nobles were related to who, and what crests and coats of arms belonged to which, and stuff like that.

Somehow our Randle Holme missed out on getting his official license from the King and when he’d painted a few coats of arms and had them mounted in churches and such, another herald sued him for poaching on his aristocratic painting turf. There must have been enough business to go around because they seem to have made up and our Randle Holme ended up working for the guy who sued him.

By 1688 he knew the ropes well enough to publish a book about heraldry and did so out of his own house.  Volume one was the ins and outs of heraldry.  Volume two and three (he gave up before getting four to print) were more along the lines of an encyclopedia.

One of the things he mentioned in this encyclopedia-like book were names for the different ranks of students at Cambridge

• Fresh Men
• Sophy Moore
• Junior Soph, and
• Senior Soph

All the dictionaries agree on the sophy part of sophomore, but there is a little divergence when it comes to the more part.

The Greek word for wisdom was sophos and obviously someone who’s already survived a year of college is more sophos-isticated than someone who hasn’t.

But the second half of the word, more is said by many to come from moron; more or less the opposite of sophisticated.

Some dictionaries give this as the legitimate etymology; others say a folk etymology likely influenced the word.  It’s a subtle difference.

In any case, since we don’t know a proven alternative etymology it’s fun to believe that sophomore literally means half wise and half stupid, as a well educated but highly inexperienced person might seem.

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