comparative philology

American  

noun

1. comparative linguistics.

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Etymology

Origin of comparative philology

First recorded in 1880–85

Example Sentences

He attended St. Paul’s School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he earned a degree in classics and comparative philology in 1952.

From New York Times • Aug. 29, 2016

The most prodigious of British autodidacts was Joseph Wright, a Victorian workhouse boy who became professor of comparative philology at Oxford.

From The Guardian • Jun. 20, 2015

We saw that whereas philology treats language only as a means, comparative philology chooses language as the object of scientific inquiry.

From Lectures on The Science of Language by Müller, Max

Archæologia Britannia, 1707, the first comparative Celtic grammar and the finest piece of work in comparative philology hitherto done in England, contains this tale as a specimen of Cornish then still spoken in Cornwall.

From Celtic Folk and Fairy Tales by Various

In 1872-1880 Greenough offered the first courses in Sanskrit and comparative philology given at Harvard.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 5 "Greek Law" to "Ground-Squirrel" by Various