erudition

First attested in the 15th Century. From Middle French érudition, from Latin eruditio (“an instructing, learning, erudition”), from erudire (“to instruct, educate, cultivate”, literally “free from rudeness”), from e (“out”) + rudis (“rude”).

• IPA^(key): /ˌɛɹʊˈdɪʃən/

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erudition (countable and uncountable, plural eruditions)

1. Profound knowledge acquired from learning and scholarship.
   • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 179:

     Professor Archimedes Q. Porter was their only immediate anxiety. Fully assured in his own mind that his daughter had been picked up by a passing steamer, he gave over the last vestige of apprehension concerning her welfare, and devoted his giant intellect solely to the consideration of those momentous and abstruse scientific problems which he considered the only proper food for thought in one of his erudition.

2. The refinement, polish and knowledge that education confers.

• (profound knowledge): knowledge, information, learning, lore, scholarship, scholarism

• erudite
• rude

• “erudition”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “erudition”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “erudition”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.