linguist

Borrowed from Latin lingua (“language”) + -ist.

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɪŋɡwɪst/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

linguist (plural linguists)

1. One who studies linguistics.

   Antonym: nonlinguist

   Hypernym: scholar

   Hyponym: philologist

   1. (usually) One who studies modern-day linguistics, that is, linguistic science.

      Hypernyms: scientist < scholar

      Hyponyms: phonologist, morphologist, syntactician, grammarian, phonetician, sociophonetician, dialectologist, dialectician; comparative linguist, anthropolinguist, cryptolinguist, Eurolinguist, geolinguist, metalinguist, neurolinguist, xenolinguist

      • 2018 June 15, Julia Waldow, “George Lakoff says this is how Trump uses words to con the public”, in CNN Business‎^[1]:

        President Donald Trump has "turned words into weapons" -- and journalists are providing additional ammunition.
        That's according to Trump critic George Lakoff, a renowned linguist and professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.

      • 2023 February 3, Pia Ceres, “Quoting Taylor Swift Lyrics Is an Actual Linguistic Thing”, in Wired‎^[2], San Francisco, C.A.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 May 2023:

        The internet serves as an accelerant to fanilects. Because song lyrics are readily available online, they have a characteristic linguists call "persistence," meaning anyone can refer to them and reuse them.

2. A person skilled in languages.

   Antonym: nonlinguist

   Hyponyms: multilinguist, polylinguist, trilinguist, bilinguist, orthoepist

   • 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC:

     The words of these songs were either without meaning, or derived from an idiom with which Watt, a very fair linguist, had no acquaintance.

3. A human translator; an interpreter, especially in the armed forces.

   Antonym: nonlinguist

• lingua
• linguaphile
• multilingual
• polyglot
• prescriptivist

• “492. scholar” in Roget's Thesaurus, T. Y. Crowell Co., 1911.
• “linguist” in Moby Thesaurus II, Grady Ward, 1996.

linguist m (plural linguiști, feminine equivalent linguistă)

1. alternative form of lingvist