gobshite n. a stupid or incompetent person
I wish I was still in a work setting so I could use this word. Goodness knows that corporate environments are full of this particular breed of person. This word also reminds me of our trip to Ireland awhile ago since its source is Irish slang. One of the things I love most about the Irish people is their candidness and ability to tell you how it is. If you're stupid or incompetent, they will surely let you know. They also have an incredible knack of finding just the right words to capture their meaning as well. Perhaps that is why so many great writers have come from Ireland - Joyce, Yeats, Lewis, Swift. I am not Irish, but sometimes I wish I was (my deceased Italian relatives are rolling over in their graves...). Italians are blunt and honest as well, but they are less eloquent and humorous when doing so as the Irish. At least, that has been my experience.Anyway, back to gobshite. I was just googling this word and came upon an interesting cognitive bias called the Dunning - Kruger effect. Here's some info from Wikipedia:Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:
- tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
- fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
- fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
- recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.