Sophomores get a bad rap. A lot of people seem to think they’re foolish (no matter what they do), when they know they’re pretty wise. The history of the words ‘sophomore’ and ‘sophomoric’ (which developed from ‘sophomore’) proves that it has always been tough to be a sophomore.
Those words probably come from a combination of the Greek terms ‘sophos’ (which means ‘wise’) and ‘moros’ (which means ‘foolish’). But sophomores can take comfort in the fact that some very impressive words, including ‘philosopher’ and ‘sophisticated,’ are also related to ‘sophos.’