linguist

American  

[ling-gwist] / ˈlɪŋ gwɪst /

noun

• linguists
  plural

1. a specialist in linguistics.

2. a person who is skilled in several languages; polyglot.

---

linguist British  

/ ˈlɪŋɡwɪst /

noun

1. a person who has the capacity to learn and speak foreign languages

2. a person who studies linguistics

3. the spokesman for a chief

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• linguists
  plural

Etymology

Origin of linguist

First recorded in 1580–90; from Latin lingu(a) “tongue, speech” + -ist

Explanation

A linguist is someone who studies language. Linguists study every aspect of language, including vocabulary, grammar, the sound of language, and how words evolve over time. The study of language is called linguistics, and people who study linguistics are linguists. Being a linguist isn't easy; you usually have to go to graduate school and conduct research about a specific aspect of language. There are computational linguists, forensic linguists, comparative linguists, and many other specialties. If you love language, you'd probably enjoy a career as a linguist.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

linguist linguists

By examining bodies of written work, linguists can track the rise of such language quirks, says Kimberly Becker, a linguist and co-host of the “Women Talkin’ ‘Bout AI” podcast.

From Barron's ● Apr. 14, 2026

Michael Hahn, a linguist based in Saarbrücken, set out to answer that question with Richard Futrell from the University of California, Irvine.

From Science Daily ● Feb. 20, 2026

In 2020, photographer Caitlin O’Hara snapped linguist Rachid Baligh of Scottsdale, Ariz., and Marrakesh, Morocco, with his family, his 2015 Ural cT motorcycle, and his miniature schnauzer, Lola, in the Arizona desert.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 28, 2025

His Kenyan counterpart, computational linguist Lilian Wanzare, says recording the speech on the continent meant creating data aimed at reflecting how people really live and speak.

From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2025

As the linguist Geoffrey Pullum has noted, there is nothing wrong with a news report that uses the passive voice to say, “Helicopters were flown in to put out the fires.”

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

That sentence structure is popping up everywhere these days, and linguists tie its popularity to AI models.

From Barron's ● Apr. 14, 2026

In earlier research, linguists tried to avoid similarities between related or nearby languages by selecting samples from distant regions.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 5, 2026

But it’s clear that the phenomenon is not just the tweedy concern of linguists.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2025

“The effort is praiseworthy, but so excessively tardy that it is perfectly useless,” a collective of linguists wrote in the Liberation newspaper on Thursday.

From BBC ● Nov. 14, 2024

In the 1970s and 1980s linguists applied glottochronological techniques to the Algonkian dictionaries compiled by early colonists.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann