scholar
nounUK /ˈskɒlə/ · US /ˈskɑlɚ/
Etymology From Middle English scolar, scolare, scoler, scolere (also scholer), from Old English scōlere (“scholar, learner”), from Late Latin scholāris, from schola (“school”), from Ancient Greek σχολή (skholḗ, “spare time, leisure", later, "conversations and the knowledge gained through them during free time; the places where these conversations took place”), equivalent to school + -ar. Doublet of schooler, Schuyler, and escolar. Compare Saterland Frisian Sköiler, Middle Low German schö̂lære, schö̂lere, schö̂ler (> modern German Low German Schöler), Dutch scholier, German Schüler.
A student; one who studies at school or college, typically having a scholarship.
A specialist in a particular branch of knowledge.
A learned person; a bookman.
- The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone,[…]. Scribes, illuminators, and scholars held such stones directly over manuscript pages as an aid in seeing what was being written, drawn, or read.2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist:
Singapore Someone who received a prestigious scholarship.
- Derived terms
- Chinese scholar tree, choral scholar, day-scholar, gentleman and scholar, independent scholar, King's Scholar, nonscholar, organ scholar, Oxford scholar, Queen's Scholar, scholar and gentleman, scholaress, Scholar Green, scholarism, scholarless, scholarlike, scholarly, scholar's gown, scholarship, scholar's mate, visiting scholar
- Related terms
- scholiast, savant, scholarch, humanities scholar