academic

[ak-uh-dem-ik]

adjective

1. of or relating to a college, academy, school, or other educational institution.

   academic requirements.

2. pertaining to areas of study that are not primarily vocational or applied, as the humanities or pure mathematics.

   Synonyms: liberal, humanist

3. theoretical or hypothetical; not practical, realistic, or directly useful.

   an academic question;

   an academic discussion of a matter already decided.

4. learned or scholarly but lacking in worldliness, common sense, or practicality.

   Synonyms: theoretical

5. conforming to set rules, standards, or traditions; conventional.

   academic painting.

6. acquired by formal education, especially at a college or university.

   academic preparation for the ministry.

7. Academic, of or relating to Academe or to the Platonic school of philosophy.

noun

1. a student or teacher at a college or university.

2. a person who is academic in background, attitudes, methods, etc..

   He was by temperament an academic, concerned with books and the arts.

3. Academic, a person who supports or advocates the Platonic school of philosophy.

4. academics, the scholarly activities of a school or university, as classroom studies or research projects.

   more emphasis on academics and less on athletics.

academic

/ ˌækəˈdɛmɪk /

adjective

1. belonging or relating to a place of learning, esp a college, university, or academy

2. of purely theoretical or speculative interest

   an academic argument

3. excessively concerned with intellectual matters and lacking experience of practical affairs

4. (esp of a schoolchild) having an aptitude for study

5. conforming to set rules and traditions; conventional

   an academic painter

6. relating to studies such as languages, philosophy, and pure science, rather than applied, technical, or professional studies

noun

1. a member of a college or university

Other Word Forms

• antiacademic adjective
• interacademic adjective
• nonacademic adjective
• proacademic adjective
• pseudoacademic adjective
• quasi-academic adjective
• semiacademic adjective
• subacademic adjective
• unacademic adjective
• academically adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of academic¹

First recorded in 1580–90; from Latin Acadēmicus, from Greek Akadēmeikós. See academy, academe, -ic

Synonym Study

See formal.

Example Sentences

Both believe in the importance of academics and the lessons learned in sports to help prepare students for the future.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

He’s never run a clinical trial, treated a patient or published academic research.

Read more on Salon

Anne-Teresa Markovic, an academic originally from Nuremberg, says she was struck by the range of food and drink offerings being "more prominent" there than in Germany while visiting Christmas markets in Manchester and Leeds.

Read more on BBC

Even more consequential was the trust that the Barbers placed in Marshall Stearns, who had an academic pedigree in medieval literature and a subsuming interest in the ethnomusicology of jazz.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

As a pair of academics wrote recently in MIT Sloan Management Review, “The barrier to full automation isn’t raw capability—it’s a stack of human, legal and cultural constraints.”

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• academician 
• lecturer 
• professor 
• scholar 
• student