Would you expect a young (ish) adult to know what a nomad is?

[Pallyum]

I’m in a cafe, just me and a table of 3 lads, probably early 20’s or so. I’m not intentionally eavesdropping I promise but the cafe is quiet, and they are not!

One of them just described someone he knew as a nomad, and one of the others asked what a nomad was.

It's not a particularly common word. I'd expect most people to know it but not everyone.

You don't know what you don't know.

If they haven't come across the word before then that's simply a fact all on its own. Doesn't necessarily mean they aren't well read or educated.

Yes of course I’d expect someone to know a commonplace word like that. But given that they’re in a cafe on Monday when they should be at work, they’re probably not that bright.

I don’t think they’re necessarily poorly educated @ShowOfHands. But I will admit to being surprised, and then to wondering if I was right to be surprised.

At my office we are regularly entertained by the little bits of knowledge we've picked up that the younger members haven't. Not in a nasty way, but just the differences in life experience, cultural & language changes etc. And in turn by how much they teach us about youth today.

I sound ancient, but I'm only in my 30s

@RosyPoesy

Yes of course I’d expect someone to know a commonplace word like that. But given that they’re in a cafe on Monday when they should be at work, they’re probably not that bright.

Gosh, I don't know where to start.Not everyone works. Not everyone works Mondays. Some people work in cafes. HTH.

I’m in a cafe on a Monday @RosyPoesy …

@RosyPoesy

Yes of course I’d expect someone to know a commonplace word like that. But given that they’re in a cafe on Monday when they should be at work, they’re probably not that bright.

They could be students, shift workers, on holiday, taking a break mid-shift...

Your judgement says a lot more about you then them.

Watching the young try to work a rotary phone I'd go with a no, probably not. At least they asked the question

Often you can know what something is without knowing the actual word, the guy may well have known what a nomad was once he was told, but didn't know the actual word

@RosyPoesy

Yes of course I’d expect someone to know a commonplace word like that. But given that they’re in a cafe on Monday when they should be at work, they’re probably not that bright.

Fucking hell.

Sometimes I can be found in a cafe on a Monday - working on my PhD thesis.

Aah a large vocabulary is all well and good but if you can't think of a single reason why a person isn't at work on a single Monday morning beyond it being linked to their intelligence, I think you're lacking in some critical thinking skills.

I'm going to tell my boss to switch the company's schedule around so Monday isn't our day off anymore... The people in our city might think we're uneducated and stop attending our events.

I'm early 20s and know what a nomad is, but I don't think I've ever actually heard it in real life conversation, in English. It's basically the same word in my native language (nómada) and I hear/use it more often in that form.

@RosyPoesy

Yes of course I’d expect someone to know a commonplace word like that. But given that they’re in a cafe on Monday when they should be at work, they’re probably not that bright.

Forgot to say. Shouldn't you be at work too? Instead of on MN?

My DH is currently drinking coffee and doing a sudoku. Feckless waste of space. Or he's a police officer on rest days. Definitely one of those options. I forget which.

No - why ‘should’ he know?

Interesting factoid for today though - RoseyPoesy means ‘attention seeking idiot on social media who’s just shown themselves, ironically, to be not very bright with that stupid comment’.

I'm pretty well educated and I'm not sure I would have known what a Nomad was when I was in my early 20s. But perhaps it wasn't used as much those days. Either way I wouldn't have been enormously surprised if in this day and age someone in their early 20s didn't know.

*RosyPoesy - although I’m sure it was obvious.

Sorry OP, to actually answer your question, no I wouldn't necessarily expect them to know what it meant.

I wouldn't expect it. Its not common word anymore, it's not like a word that you would come across every week or month.

If you haven't come across it, how would you know?

And as, for the vile poster further up who says people in a cafe on a Monday can't be bright, you seem very very stupid yourself. Is your world that insular you think everybody educated MUST be busy on a Monday morning?

I think I would rather be sat with someone who doesn't know what nomad rather than being sat with someone who displays such cunt-ish behaviour.

There are probably plenty of fairly common worlds that you or I don’t know. We just don’t know that we don’t know them.

Yes, I would expect people of that age to know the word ‘nomad’.

Mind you, I find some parts of the regular ‘stuff I didn’t know’ threads on here jaw-dropping — not the ones about thinking mad stuff as a child, but a woman in her 40s saying she’d thought until recently that fire blankets were for wrapping around you for protection as you escaped a house fire, or someone else saying that they’d thought Iraq was in the Midlands of England, or how a poster’s brother, who was actually serving in the British army in NI thought Sinn Féin was ‘a person’ (actual examples).

@JazzerMcCreary

There are probably plenty of fairly common worlds that you or I don’t know. We just don’t know that we don’t know them.

This is very true. There are also words that I come across fairly often that I don’t know the meaning of. I keep thinking I must look them up, and then I forget to do so until the next time I see them …

Wait until you are old like me and engage in conversation with young people and you are staggered at what they don’t know or haven’t been taught in the education system.

It’s depressing that many students nowadays don’t have a broad knowledge of the world around them.

However, there will always be gaps in people’s knowledge simply because they have never encountered that word before and that isn’t an indication of their intelligence level.

Then of course there are certain situations where people aren’t thinking properly, stress or distraction for example -

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/watch-woman-gets-first-question-4831855.amp

Start a thread on here asking people what ambivalent means. Or non plussed. Or adverse vs averse. Even when people think they know what a word means, they're often incorrect.

You only have to look at social media and see people sharing rubbish about tag meaning "touch and go", universally equating toaster settings to minutes or the comments below weird maths memes tripping people up with orders of operations or pleas for basic maths imploring you to subtract z number from X number and add y number and ta dah your age appears and on and on, to see that people really don't know what they don't know.