the.com/sophomore

means A second-year student — past the wide-eyed beginner stage but nowhere near as all-knowing as they now feel.

from Built from Greek 'sophos' (wise) and 'moros' (foolish, the same root as 'moron'), so the word is a built-in joke: it literally names the contradiction of the second-year student, bold with new learning but still half a fool. It surfaces in English in university slang, and the spelling with that odd 'ph' got cemented by folks treating it as more Greek than it strictly needed to be.