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definitions

sophomore

[sof-uh-mawr, -mohr; sof-mawr, -mohr]
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noun

a student in the second year of high school or college.
a person or group in the second year of any endeavor: He's a sophomore on Wall Street.

adjective

of or relating to a sophomore.
of or being a second effort or second version: Their sophomore album was even better than their first.

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What Does “Sophomore” Mean? Can It Be an Insult?
Of the four tiers of high school, sophomore is the year that stands out as strange. Freshman, junior, and senior are relatively clear monikers for their associated levels, and it’s funny that in school, the place where you are most expected to know the how and why of everything, second-year students are called by a term whose roots are abstruse. Then there is the problem …
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RELATED WORDS

inexperienced, undergraduate, senior, learner, student, scholar, pupil, junior, graduate, freshman, satellite, adherent, tenderfoot, beginner, novice, neophyte, brain, follower, bookworm, attendant

Origin of sophomore

1645–55; earlier sophumer, probably equivalent to sophum sophism + -er1
Related formspre·soph·o·more, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019
British Dictionary definitions for sophomore

sophomore

noun

mainly US and Canadian a second-year student at a secondary (high) school or college

adjective

(of a book, recording, etc by an artist) secondher sophomore album

Word Origin for sophomore

C17: perhaps from earlier sophumer, from sophum, variant of sophism + -er 1
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for sophomore
n.

1680s, "student in the second year of university study," literally "arguer," altered from sophumer (1650s, from sophume, archaic variant form of sophism), probably by influence of folk etymology derivation from Greek sophos "wise" + moros "foolish, dull." The original reference might be to the dialectic exercises that formed a large part of education in the middle years. At Oxford and Cambridge, a sophister (from sophist with spurious -er as in philosopher) was a second- or third-year student (what Americans would call a "junior" might be a senior sophister).

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper