Word.ws English Dictionary

man of letters

man of letters noun: a literary man; a scholar or author.

Noun

man of letters (plural men of letters)

  1. (dated) A literary man; a scholar or author.
    • This may be accounted for largely on the ground that Cicero and Petrarch were men of the same temperament and cast of mind. They were both typical men of letters. The man of letters is intellectually alert; sensitive to impressions and able to report them; hospitable to all ideas of his time; […]1898, James Harvey Robinson, Henry Winchester Rolfe, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, published 1909, page 229
    • He was a pure man of letters, untimely born in a world that had no need of letters; […] he had abandoned his real calling, and taken a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where fashion-plates and paper patterns alternated with New England love-stories and advertisements of temperance drinks.1920, Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

man of letters meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Punjabi

man of letters in Tamil

சொல்லேருழவன்

man of letters in Malayalam

പ്രസിദ്ധൻ

man of letters in Kannada

ಲೇಖಕ, ಸಾಹಿತಿ, ಬರಹಗಾರ

man of letters in Punjabi

a literary man
ਅਦੀਬ adīb
More languagesFewer languages
man of letters in Arabic
عَالِم ʕālim

Forms of man of letters

pluralmen of letters

Origin of man of letters

Calque of French homme de lettres.

Questions about man of letters

What does man of letters mean?
Man of letters means a literary man; a scholar or author.
What is man of letters in Tamil?
Man of letters in Tamil is சொல்லேருழவன். See Man of letters meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is man of letters?
Man of letters is a noun.
What is the plural of man of letters?
The plural of man of letters is men of letters.

Words near man of letters in the dictionary

  1. man of gingerbread
  2. man of God
  3. man of honor
  4. man of Kent
  5. man of law
  6. man of letters
  7. man of many parts
  8. man of means
  9. man of parts
  10. man of sin
  11. Man of Steel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: man of letters (page history and authors); man of letters (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); man of letters (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); man of letters (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “man of letters.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/man_of_letters. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.