scholar

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. Compare Saterland Frisian Sköiler, Middle Low German schö̂lære, schö̂lere, schö̂ler (> modern German Low German Schöler), Dutch scholier, German Schüler. Doublet of escolar.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈskɒlə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈskɑlɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɒlə(ɹ)

• Audio (UK):

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scholar (plural scholars)

1. A student; one who studies at school or college, typically having a scholarship.

   Synonyms: student, pupil

2. A specialist in a particular branch of knowledge.

   Synonyms: expert, specialist

3. A learned person; a bookman.

   Synonyms: academic, learned person, savant, scholarly person, erudite

   • 2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist:

     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.

4. (Singapore) Someone who received a prestigious scholarship.

• scholiast

• savant
• scholarch
• Thesaurus:humanities scholar

• “scholar”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “scholar”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “scholar”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “scholar”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “scholar”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

• chorals, lorchas, orchals