What do you call a beginning student who’s advanced in age?

If you were trying to solve a recent New York Times acrostic, you would need to search in your head for an eight-letter word that answers the question.  For the life of me, I could not discover or devise any such word.

That frustration held despite my keeping up with gerontological lore featuring continuing education and other forms of learning on the part of elders. This country offers programs galore for older people eager to learn more.

The answer to the question, it turns out, is “opsimath.”  I defy you to have arrived at this response on your own. Not an American in a million has any knowledge of the word, I can assure you.

Were you well versed in ancient Greek roots, you would perhaps have had a shot at it.  But my own knowledge of such basic foundational language in Greek did not help in this instance.

Humiliated by my ignorance, I had to wait for a week before looking at the answers. They revealed the awful eight letters not known to me.

The root “opsi” means late.  I have no recollection of hearing or reading it in Xenaphon’s Anabasis or other Greek classics.

The word “manthano” means learn. It’s another Greekism, perhaps once learned by me, but not deposited in my memory.

So, if you wish to impress your friends with your linguistic, not to say gerontological savvy, cultivate the English word opsimath.