linguist
Americannoun
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linguists
plural
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a specialist in linguistics.
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a person who is skilled in several languages; polyglot.
noun
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a person who has the capacity to learn and speak foreign languages
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a person who studies linguistics
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the spokesman for a chief
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of linguist
First recorded in 1580–90; from Latin lingu(a) “tongue, speech” + -ist
Explanation
A linguist is someone who studies language. Linguists study every aspect of language, including vocabulary, grammar, the sound of language, and how words evolve over time. The study of language is called linguistics, and people who study linguistics are linguists. Being a linguist isn't easy; you usually have to go to graduate school and conduct research about a specific aspect of language. There are computational linguists, forensic linguists, comparative linguists, and many other specialties. If you love language, you'd probably enjoy a career as a linguist.
Vocabulary lists containing linguist
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -ist
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"Teen Slang" – "Is Money Affecting Your Social Status?”
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Eric Baker, a retired Air Force linguist who volunteers at the Pattaya VFW office, said he had been following news coverage of the Lincoln’s lengthy deployment.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026
By examining bodies of written work, linguists can track the rise of such language quirks, says Kimberly Becker, a linguist and co-host of the “Women Talkin’ ‘Bout AI” podcast.
From Barron's ● Apr. 14, 2026
Michael Hahn, a linguist based in Saarbrücken, set out to answer that question with Richard Futrell from the University of California, Irvine.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 20, 2026
A gifted linguist, she soon mastered Mayan dialects.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 25, 2026
In the first part of the 1986 article, Joseph H. Greenberg, a linguist at Stanford, proclaimed that the profusion of idioms was more apparent than real.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
That sentence structure is popping up everywhere these days, and linguists tie its popularity to AI models.
From Barron's ● Apr. 14, 2026
In earlier research, linguists tried to avoid similarities between related or nearby languages by selecting samples from distant regions.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 5, 2026
But it’s clear that the phenomenon is not just the tweedy concern of linguists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2025
For over a century, experts - linguists, scientists and archaeologists - have tried to crack the Indus script.
From BBC ● Jan. 16, 2025
It will send the linguists back to India with their tape recorders, because it undermines the critical superstructure of their methodology.
From "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
