arcadia (n. ahr-KAY-dee-uh)

: a region or scene of simple pleasure and quiet

Arcadia was a mountainous, landlocked region of ancient Greece. Its isolation and pastoral character made it a favorite setting for Greek and Roman pastoral poems. In the poems of Arcadia, naive and ideal innocence was unaffected by the passions of the larger world. Shepherds played their pipes and sighed with longing for flirtatious nymphs; shepherdesses sang to their flocks, and goat-footed nature gods cavorted in the fields and woods. Now English speakers often use arcadia to designate a place of rustic innocence and simple, quiet pleasure. Arcadian can mean idyllically pastoral or idyllically innocent, simple, or untroubled. These words are sometimes -- but not always -- capitalized.

sapient (adj. SAY-pee-unt or SAP-ee-unt)

: possessing or expressing great sagacity : wise

Human beings certainly like to think they're wise, and, in fact, the word Homo sapiens (humankind) comes in part from the Latin word sapiens, meaning wise or intelligent. Sapiens in turn comes from the verb sapere, which means "to be wise" (and which also gave us sage and savant). Sapiens and sapere are also ancestors of our adjective sapient, of course. Sapient came to us from Latin by way of Middle French and has been used in English to mean wise since the 15th century. In recent times, it also has been used in anthropological contexts -- as has sapiens itself -- to mean "characteristic of modern humans."