Sutor, ne ultra crepidam
Sutor, ne ultra crepidam is a Latin expression meaning literally "Shoemaker, not beyond the shoe", used to warn individuals not to pass judgment beyond their expertise. The expression led to the term ultracrepidarianism, which is the giving of opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge. Its origin is set down in Pliny the Elder's "Naturalis Historia" [XXXV, 85 (Loeb IX, 323–325)] where he records that a shoemaker ("sutor") had approached the painter Apelles of Kos to point out a defect in the artist's rendition of a sandal ("crepida" from Greek "krepis ), which Apelles duly corrected. Encouraged by this, the shoemaker then began to enlarge on other defects he considered present in the painting, at which point Apelles advised him that ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret" (a shoemaker should not judge beyond the shoe), which advice, Pliny observed, had become a proverbial saying. The Renaissance interest both in painting and classical antiquity made the expression popular again. A related English proverb is ""A cobbler should stick to his last"". The Russian language commonly uses variants of the phrase "Суди, дружок, не свыше сапога" ("Judge not, pal, above the boot"), after Alexander Pushkin 's of the legend. A related proverb is found in Spanish-speaking countries: ""Zapatero, a tus zapatos"" (""Shoemaker, [tend] to your shoes""). The saying remains popular in several languages, as in the English, "A cobbler should stick to his last"; the Dutch, "Schoenmaker, blijf bij je leest"; the Danish "Skomager, bliv ved din læst"; the German, "Schuster, bleib bei deinen Leisten"; the Polish "Pilnuj, szewcze, kopyta", (the last four in English, "Cobbler, stick to your last"); the Spanish, "Zapatero a tus zapatos" ("Shoemaker, to your shoes"); and the Russian "Суди, дружок, не свыше сапога" ("Judge not, pal, above the boot ), after Alexander Pushkin's poetic retelling of the legend. Karl Marx ridiculed the idea: 'Ne sutor ultra crepidam' – this nec plus ultra of handicraft wisdom became sheer nonsense, from the moment the watchmaker Watt invented the steam-engine, the barber Arkwright the throstle, and the working-jeweller Fulton the steamship." Ultracrepidarianism. Ultracrepidarianism is the behavior of giving of opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge The term "ultracrepidarian" was first publicly recorded in 1819 by the English essayist William Hazlitt in an open "Letter to William Gifford", the editor of the "Quarterly Review": "You have been well  called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic." It was used again four years later in 1823, in the satire by Hazlitt's friend Leigh Hunt, "Ultra-Crepidarius: a Satire on William Gifford". Occasionally the word "ultracrepidarianism" was used later.