liberal arts

American  

plural noun

1. the academic course of instruction at a college intended to provide general knowledge and comprising the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, as opposed to professional or technical subjects.

2. (during the Middle Ages) studies comprising the quadrivium and trivium, including arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

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liberal arts British  

plural noun

1. Often shortened to: arts.  the fine arts, humanities, sociology, languages, and literature

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liberal arts ¹ Cultural  

1. The areas of learning that cultivate general intellectual ability rather than technical or professional skills. The term liberal arts is often used as a synonym for humanities, although the liberal arts also include the sciences. The word liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, meaning suitable for a free man, as opposed to a slave.

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liberal arts ² Cultural  

1. The areas of learning that cultivate general intellectual ability rather than technical or professional skills. Liberal arts is often used as a synonym for humanities, because literature, languages, history, and philosophy are often considered the primary subjects of the liberal arts. The term liberal arts originally meant arts suitable for free people (libri in Latin) but not for slaves.

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Etymology

Origin of liberal arts

First recorded in 1745–55; translation of Latin artēs līberālēs “works befitting a free person,” literally, “skills of freedom”

Example Sentences

Genuine liberal arts learning requires students to wrestle with the best that has been written and said by the most rigorous thinkers, living and dead, on all sides of the issues.

From The Wall Street Journal

California grads who moved to New York for college were drawn to smaller, competitive private liberal arts colleges, usually with heftier tuitions than California’s public universities.

From Los Angeles Times

“It’s a liberal arts college because these people have so many different interests, and those are not being represented,” said Zhan.

From The Wall Street Journal

At Brandeis, we are integrating the liberal arts with the applied arts, giving students “a foot in the library and a foot in the street.”

From The Wall Street Journal

Do liberal arts schools present students with a core curriculum that expects them to master foundational subjects like economics, a foreign language, composition and natural sciences?

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• mathematics