Other Word Forms
- pseudoscholarly adjective
- quasi-scholarly adjective
- scholarliness noun
- superscholarly adjective
- unscholarly adjective
Etymology
Origin of scholarly
Explanation
Someone who's scholarly is a serious student. You can describe your studious friend who's always working on a research paper or reading a huge book as scholarly. Use the adjective scholarly when you talk about a person who is focused on learning — in other words, a scholar. You can also describe things that relate to studying or knowledge as scholarly, like a scholarly article in a journal or a scholarly atmosphere in a library. The Old English word scolere, or "student," is the root of both scholar and scholarly, from the Latin word for school, schola.
Vocabulary lists containing scholarly
Chapter 1: What Does a Historian Do?
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Words to Describe a Teacher
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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
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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.
Fadiah wrote on X that being denied entry was "tantamount to a deliberate attack on my scholarly work".
From BBC • Mar. 27, 2026
In 1913, on the advice of a British Museum curator, Routledge sailed to Easter Island, where she would carry out the first scholarly study of the island’s monuments and traditions.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026
The manuscript has received little scholarly attention, which Dr. Ilko believes is because its miracles were considered too rural in focus.
From Science Daily • Feb. 2, 2026
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw has been rightly known until now for her immense scholarly work, establishing terms like “intersectionality” and “critical race theory” that now have grown into entire fields of study.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 30, 2026
But without academic credentials, he despairs of ever getting published in a scholarly journal.
From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
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.
