Where does ultracrepidarian come from?

Ultracrepidarian is derived from the Latin phrase ultrā crepidam, meaning “beyond the sole of a shoe.” The phrase is a reference to a Greek myth. The story goes that Apelles, a successful painter, overheard a shoemaker criticizing the way Apelles had rendered a sandal in one of his paintings. Apelles corrected the mistake, but when the shoemaker began criticizing other aspects of the painting, Apelles wasn’t having it. He responded with a version of the phrase, essentially telling the shoemaker that he should not offer opinions beyond what he is an expert on.

The moral of the story became a proverb, and a version of it was recorded by the first-century Roman writer Pliny the Elder. He wrote the line as ne supra crepidam sutor judicare, which translates as “Let the cobbler [shoemaker] not judge above the sandal.”

A version of ultracrepidarian is first recorded in English in 1819, when essayist William Hazlitt referred to writer William Gafford as an “ultra-crepidarian critic” (literary burn!). An unhyphenated, noun version of the word appeared soon after, in the 1820s.

Due to its obscurity, ultracrepidarian usually only gets trotted out when the speaker’s audience is well-read and likely to get the reference.