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White knowledge is information acquired effortlessly or without remembering how it was learned. Coined by Terry Pratchett, it entered mainstream language through his Discworld series. It can include jargon, slang, and cultural incidents, and may be related to white noise.
White knowledge is information you acquire effortlessly, or information you gather without being able to remember how you know something. The term was likely coined by science fiction/fantasy author, Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld series of books. The first use could be in 1995 or earlier, depending on the accounts.
Due to the popularity of Pratchett’s humorous series, the concept of white knowledge entered the mainstream of the English language and was initially used more commonly by people working in the information technology (IT) field, although it may have been used from any fan of Pratchett’s books. White knowledge may also have first been used in the UK and migrated rapidly to the US and Canada.
Most people have the experience of realizing that they simply know something, or have learned something along the way, catching it in the constant buzz of communication around them. The term may be related to white noise, the background sounds of television and radio channels that receive no signal.
The constant flow of communication that people live in helps us learn things without being aware that we are learning them. Certain types of jargon like slang words, for example, or all acronyms used in text messages are often white knowledge acquisitions. Most people don’t sit down and study these acronyms — they just pick them up during the texting process, and if they’re easily learned, they’re examples of white knowledge.
Other types of white knowledge might be collected in the workplace: slang terms for various types of production, abbreviations or alternative names for food ordered in restaurants, informal code names for patients in hospitals. In other situations, people simply “knew” certain things, such as how to say a particular prayer in church, or that slavery existed in America. Cultural incidents that mention things like slavery make them common knowledge, and most kids are familiar with the concept of slavery long before they take an American history class.
Sometimes white knowledge can refer specifically to works of fantasy or science fiction. For example, Robert Jordan, while probably not using Pratchett’s term, does use the concept repeatedly in The Wheel of Time series. People who learn to channel, Jordan’s term for using magic, have these incidents where they suddenly only know how to weave powers to produce a result, without being taught.
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