As the title, really. I feel there should be something, but I can’t thing what.
Example:
I’m going to cook a risotto tonight.
Why would anyone waste time cooking? Ready meals are delicious!
Can you cook?
No - but I don’t need to. I told you, ready meals are delicious. Cooking is just a waste of time!
Is there a succinct description - word or phrase - for dissing what you are unable to do yourself?
j
Dickish?
Amongst other things. But I was looking for something a bit more…specific?
j
Maybe a version of sour grapes?
Very dickish?
Bitter envy or bitterly envious is his I would desribe it. Found this here:
Bitter envy takes jealousy to the next step by adding resentment and anger, and from it emerges words that stab, cut, tear down, refute, and diminish. We use these to reduce the stature of another so we may seem to stand taller. A talebearer or gossip only wants his listener to think less of another so that he might think more of him.
“The girl who cannot dance says the band cannot play.”
I think this is definitely close. Specifying bitterness - well, that will be applicable in many cases, but maybe not all.
I have not heard this expression before, and I like it a lot.
j
Yeah, from the thread title alone, I thought it was going to be Dunning-Kruger, but I would say the example given is pretty clearly sour grapes - X is bad, because I can’t have it.
Again, I think “sour grapes” is close, but a subset of the general phenomenon. (And before anyone else points out the irony, here I am saying “sour grapes” isn’t quite right, having failed to come up with that phrase myself).
I think it probably applies in most cases. But it is possible that our TV-dinner eating example (a made up example, of course) genuinely believes that cooking is a waste of time, and has no wish to learn. In which case, maybe no envy. But they’re nevertheless dissing a skill they don’t have.
j
I agree that “sour grapes” is close but not precisely on the nose. “Sour grapes” is disparaging something because you don’t have it and can’t get it, but the something need not be a skill. (In the fable it was, of course, grapes.)
I don’t think that’s quite it either. In the example, it isn’t that the person can’t learn the skill; just that they haven’t, and don’t think it’s worth doing.
I think a related, and very common, phenomenon is people assuming that a job they’ve never done and don’t know how to do requires little or no skill or ability.
You could call that the Jackson Pollock Syndrome. “Why, a five-year-old child could do that.”
Coining it now: cantsaying.
Could you be looking for the word: Floccinaucinihilipilification?
This isn’t exactly a word or phrase you are looking for. My best friend always says why cook let’s order delivery from a restaurant. It tastes just as good and no mess to clean. I saids ok, then you pay for the meal this time and I’ll pay for it next time. She stopped saying that after a couple of months and that was my solution.
It’s an interesting question. There are some skills that I don’t have and regret (building a deck), and others that I don’t have and don’t regret (glassblowing). But there are few skills (cooking human flesh) that I don’t have and despise. It’s kind of like the opposite of geekery, to loathe a skill that one doesn’t have, and it relates to provincialism and snobbery in a weird way.
Yeah, I think we’re peppering the target without quite nailing it. I have in mind the need for the expression to indicate willful ignorance - I think that’s an important part of it, and I think I just repeated what you just said, using slightly different words.
Lord, I hope not. Imagine - coming up with a use for the word after all this time…
j
As a verb, to poo-poo something.
“He poo-pooed those who brought a homemade lunch, saying he preferred a ready meal.”
@What_Exit How do you pronounce?
Floccinaucinihilipilification