scholar

American  

[skol-er] / ˈskɒl ər /

noun

scholars plural

1. a learned or erudite person, especially one who has profound knowledge of a particular subject.

   Synonyms:

   savant

2. a student; pupil.

3. a student who has been awarded a scholarship.

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scholar British  

/ ˈskɒlə /

noun

1. a learned person, esp in the humanities

2. a person, esp a child, who studies; pupil

3. a student of merit at an educational establishment who receives financial aid, esp from an endowment given for such a purpose

4. a school pupil

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Synonym Usage

See pupil ¹.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nonscholar
  noun
• scholarliness
  noun
• nonscholarly
  adjective
• scholarless
  adjective
• scholarly
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• scholars
  plural

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

scholar scholars

“You don’t just go somewhere and get a prescription and put it in your cabinet,” said Nancy Berlinger, senior research scholar at the Hastings Center for Bioethics in Garrison, N.Y.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 20, 2026

Nolan attempts to assert the text’s relevancy in our contemporary age, but that’s not something any scholar or even the average reader would contest.

From Salon ● Jul. 18, 2026

Chong Ja Ian, a non-resident scholar with Carnegie China, said Pew's latest results were not surprising.

From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026

“He’s very emotional about this,” said Sergey Radchenko, a Russia scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026

He was a man of many parts: a scholar, an artist, an engineer, an architect, a man of peace, and a man of war.

From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell

Some scholars have suggested that though their faces do not look upward, they are bearing witness to Mary’s coronation and thus engaging with colonial religious views.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026

Her face displays the trademark unibrow and faint mustache — a gender-bending look that, scholars say, reflects Kahlo’s defiant repudiation of the classic female aesthetic.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026

Many scholars believe it was made by artisans in or around Canterbury in southern England.

From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026

Legal scholars and court watchers were shocked by our finding.

From Salon ● Jul. 3, 2026

Long before Descartes we can find references to laws of nature in a scientific context, and scholars have struggled to disentangle the origins of the concept.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Related Words

• academic
• doctor
• intellectual
• philosopher
• professor
• scientist
• student
• teacher