beyond our ken
idiom

- not within the range of what someone knows or understands

- not in your area of knowledge

- said to mean that you do not have much knowledge, understanding or experience of something

Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionary, Collins Dictionary

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The phrase "beyond our ken" has an interesting etymology and usage history:

The word "ken" comes from Middle English kennen, meaning "to know, perceive, understand” and ultimately deriving from Old English cennan and Proto-Germanic kanjaną. In modern usage, "ken" as a noun means "knowledge, perception, or sight”.

The earliest references to "beyond our ken" are found in American sources, not British as might be expected. The earliest known usage appears in the Gettysburg newspaper 'The Republican Banner', in November 1834: “But you [are] in a strange mood to-day, and since the balloon is beyond our ken, you [begin] to dream of a flight through the air…”.

The phrase became well-known enough to be used as a pun in the title of the popular BBC radio comedy show "Beyond Our Ken", which ran from 1958 to 1964. This show played on the name of its star, Kenneth Horne, and the familiar expression "beyond our ken”.

While somewhat old-fashioned, the phrase is still used in contemporary English to describe things that are difficult to understand or outside one's area of expertise.

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THE UNKNOWN UNKNOWN

The mystery of the unknown has intrigued humanity for centuries, reflecting our endless quest for knowledge of the universe and the ultimate nature of reality.

One example at the edge of our understanding is the enigma of dark matter. Despite its making up approximately 27% of the universe, scientists know remarkably little about it. Its presence is inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter, but its true nature remains elusive, demonstrating something profoundly "beyond our ken" in modern astrophysics.

The discovery of penicillin illustrated how science slowly extends our understanding. In 1928, Alexander Fleming noticed that a mould, later identified as Penicillium notatum, killed bacteria. At the time, the mechanism behind this antibacterial action was unknown. It wasn't until years later that the substance was identified and understood,... thereby revolutionising medicine.

Such mysteries remind us that no matter how much we learn—just beyond our ken—there will always be more to discover.

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SYNONYMS

above our heads, alien (to us), a mystery to us, an enigma, arcane, baffling, beats me, bewildering, BEYOND OUR KEN, beyond comprehension (our grasp, human understanding, imagination, mortal understanding, our grasp, our pay grade, our reach, beyond understanding), confounding, cryptic, defying comprehension, enigmatic, esoteric, far-fetched, foggy, gobbledygook, Greek to me, hard to fathom, impenetrable, incomprehensible, inconceivable, inexplicable, inscrutable, it's all Greek to me, mind-boggling, mystifying, obscure, opaque, out of our league, over our heads, past understanding, perplexing, puzzling, recondite, rocket science, too deep for me, uncharted territory, unfathomable, unutterable, vexing

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a sentence, say something like:

“Programming matters are BEYOND MY KEN, I'm afraid… can you coordinate that directly with our IT manager?”

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