scholar

American  

[skol-er] / ˈskɒl ər /

noun

• scholars
  plural

1. a learned or erudite person, especially one who has profound knowledge of a particular subject.

   Synonyms:

   savant

2. a student; pupil.

3. a student who has been awarded a scholarship.

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scholar British  

/ ˈskɒlə /

noun

1. a learned person, esp in the humanities

2. a person, esp a child, who studies; pupil

3. a student of merit at an educational establishment who receives financial aid, esp from an endowment given for such a purpose

4. a school pupil

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Synonym Usage

See pupil ¹.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nonscholar
  noun
• scholarliness
  noun
• nonscholarly
  adjective
• scholarless
  adjective
• scholarly
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• scholars
  plural

Etymology

Origin of scholar

First recorded before 1000; from Late Latin scholāris, equivalent to Latin schol(a) school ¹ + -āris -ar ¹; replacing Middle English scoler(e), Old English scolere, from Late Latin, as above

Explanation

Someone who learns is a scholar, though the word also means someone with a lot of knowledge in one subject. If you know a lot about books, you could be called a literary scholar. It doesn't take a Latin scholar to understand the word scholar. It probably reminds you of school, scholastic, and scholarship. That's because they all share the Latin root schola which means school. A scholar in the academic sense usually has his or her area of specialty in the humanities as opposed to the sciences.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

scholar scholars

That may be one reason people are airing their frustrations on social media, according to Sara Collins, a senior scholar at the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation focused on healthcare policy.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026

The College Track nonprofit posted that Urbina Ruiz was a scholar with the program, which supports first-generation students from under-resourced communities in earning a bachelor’s degree.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026

"Evolution has effectively run the same experiment over and over again across different groups of arthropods," says R. Antonio Gomez, postdoctoral scholar in A&S' Department of Biology and lead author of the study.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026

Jacobs-Wagner is also a member of Stanford Bio-X and an institute scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 5, 2026

“Skyla, this is Jim’s boy Wash, the scholar who’s going to be a doctor or something.”

From "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez

Even the entreaties of Islamic scholars and officials of Islamic countries the world over have not bent the iron will of the emir and his enforcers, especially on the most sensitive issue of education.

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

We know that over the past half-century, more than 200 people have been exonerated after having been sentenced to die, and scholars estimate that 4 percent of those sentenced to death are innocent.

From Slate ● Aug. 13, 2026

Researchers believe historic parchment represents a largely unexplored source of information that could connect genetics with questions traditionally studied by historians, archaeologists, and other scholars.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026

While the Dalai Lama expressed sorrow and questioned the efficacy of such protests, some scholars criticized him for not trying to stop the practice.

From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026

Long before Descartes we can find references to laws of nature in a scientific context, and scholars have struggled to disentangle the origins of the concept.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Related Words

• academic
• doctor
• intellectual
• philosopher
• professor
• scientist
• student
• teacher