Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[Dystopia]

Hey guys, just joined the forum after lurking for a couple weeks, and I wanted to grab your input on something that’s been bothering me.
Whenever I hear someone say “I’m not atheist, I’m an agnostic”, I’m not exactly sure what that means. I was under the impression that agnostic is a qualifier for your belief that simply means you don’t claim to know your belief is true, such as being an agnostic Christian or somesuch.
When I see people shying away from the term atheist or squirming in their seat and milling around before tentatively using the word ‘agnostic’ alone, it grates on me just a little bit because it feels to me like they’re reinforcing the connotation of the word ‘atheist’ being somehow undesirable or simply misunderstood.
I’d never deign to shove labels onto people, and people can describe themselves however they like I suppose, but am I out of bounds with my small irritation? Unless of course someone is claiming that they don’t know what is going on inside their own head, which I never really understood either.

Thanks for your input!

(also unrelated…I can’t seem to upload an image to change my avatar..anyone had trouble with that before?)

Welcome to the forum. One can't simply be an agnostic. Agnosticism and Gnosticism are related to knowledge, a Gnostic claims to have knowledge, an agnostic claims to to know/possess no knowledge. Being an atheist or a theist is related with belief, a theist believes in a god (or several), an atheist lacks belief (in some cases an atheist can highly disbelieve) in deities. With this, four possible combinations arise, you can be an agnostic theist (you believe in a god but don't claim to know if a god exists), agnostic atheist (the same for agnostic theist but you lack belief in deities), gnostic theist (you claim to know god exists, from my experience this is the case of most religious people, but I might be wrong) or gnostic atheist (someone who thinks gods existing is logically/scientifically impossible, irrational and completely improbable). I hope I helped