educated
Americanadjective
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having undergone education.
educated people.
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characterized by or displaying qualities of culture and learning.
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based on some information or experience.
an educated estimate of next year's sales.
adjective
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having an education, esp a good one
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displaying culture, taste, and knowledge; cultivated
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(prenominal) based on experience or information (esp in the phrase an educated guess )
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of educated
Explanation
If you're educated, you've been to school or college, or otherwise been instructed or trained. Using long, fancy words will either make people think you're educated or that you're a show-off. When you make an educated decision about something, you've learned about the subject before making up your mind — you've been educated or educated yourself, and you understand it completely. An educated conversation or debate about a topic is one in which both sides have knowledge about the issues. Educated comes from educate, with its Latin root, educare, which means both "educate" and "bring up or rear children."
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.
On campus, students are educated on the importance of not touching or feeding the donkeys, which weigh about 500 pounds and can charge at humans when feeling threatened.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
I have some pretty good educated guesses about what happened.
From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2026
We have taken what we already know about superfluid helium and quantum technologies and turned that into an educated design, with the parameters and specifications needed to build one.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 1, 2026
"We were better educated, but we had great expectations and great hopes for ourselves."
From BBC ● Sep. 24, 2026
Apart from the liberal arts, the skills of the educated, there were plenty of arts that involved manual labour—mechanical arts—such as goldsmithing or masonry.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
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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.
