scholar
Americannoun
-
a learned or erudite person, especially one who has profound knowledge of a particular subject.
- Synonyms:
- savant
-
a student; pupil.
-
a student who has been awarded a scholarship.
noun
-
a learned person, esp in the humanities
-
a person, esp a child, who studies; pupil
-
a student of merit at an educational establishment who receives financial aid, esp from an endowment given for such a purpose
-
a school pupil
Synonym Usage
See pupil 1.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
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.
Vocabulary lists containing scholar
Unit 2: Pivotal Words and Phrases
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The Renaissance and Early Modern European History - Introductory
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Dwight D. Eisenhower, "The Military-Industrial Complex" (1961)
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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.
Brooke Duffy, a digital and social media scholar at Cornell University, said influencers with millions of followers can demand payments that stretch beyond six-figures.
From BBC • Jun. 30, 2026
The latter is the hangover from a peripatetic childhood defined and dominated by his charismatic father, a once-idealistic scholar whose dreams of a Arab utopia soured into authoritarian megalomania.
From Salon • Jun. 27, 2026
Mr. Claybourn is an attorney in Indiana and an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 19, 2026
Mr. Swaim quotes scholar Beatrice de Graaf saying that, in contrast to the Latin Christian “just war” tradition, in “the East, the emperor has the power to define what is evil and crush it.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 19, 2026
They count days since January 1, 4713 BC, a pretty-much arbitrary date that the scholar Joseph Scaliger chose in 1583.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
Definitions 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.
