academic

American  

[ak-uh-dem-ik] / ˌæk əˈdɛm ɪk /

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.

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noun

• academics
  plural

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 British  

/ 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

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noun

1. a member of a college or university

Synonym Usage

See formal.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

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

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• academics
  plural

Etymology

Origin of academic

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

Explanation

Something that is academic is related to school. Your parents might want to spend less time playing video games and more time focusing on academic pursuits. The noun academic refers to a professor or scholar. As a noun or an adjective, academic relates to book learning and not always in a good way. An academic discussion back in Plato's Academy was probably something better than what it has more recently come to mean: a discussion that's academic has no place in the real world; it's not practical. An academic might have a PhD in Robotics but not know how to work the TV. It doesn't have to mean stuffy, though, just related to college — like when you need an academic gown for graduation.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

academic academics

The row first erupted after another academic - self-defined "race realist" Nathan Cofnas, who was sacked from his Cambridge role in 2024 - said he found numerous instances of plagiarism in Prof Arday's work.

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

Black academic Jason Arday, who resigned from the University of Cambridge last week amid a high-profile plagiarism storm that featured racism claims, was found dead Friday, the prestigious British institution confirmed.

From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026

When they got together, Amodei was still an academic, working as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University School of Medicine, having earned his Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Princeton.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

The judge said the lawsuit, filed in March, mostly focuses on incidents that took place in the 2023-24 academic year, with a few from March 2025.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026

High schools were divided into four general categories: vocational, commercial, general, and academic.

From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers

A group of university academics last week wrote to Prentice slamming Arday's appointment and asking her to appoint an independent body to probe what happened.

From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026

At the Munich conference, Clark and Capocefalo met John Brockman, a literary agent of scientific books, who introduced Epstein to academics and Silicon Valley elites, according to Epstein documents recently released by the Justice Department.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

Private and charter schools are on the up in both academics and athletics, leaving places like Dorsey — that dominated for so long — behind.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2026

Queen's had published a paper on its academic research site co-authored by Arday and other academics from the university.

From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026

Speaker Day featured two speakers—usually small-time celebrities or small-time politicians or small-time academics, the kind of people who would come and speak at a school for the measly three hundred bucks the school budgeted.

From "Looking for Alaska" by John Green

Related Words

• academician
• lecturer
• professor
• scholar
• student