Word.ws English Dictionary

philologist

philologist noun: a person who engages in philology (historical linguistics), especially as a profession; a collector of words and their etymologies.

Noun

philologist (plural philologists)

  1. A person who engages in philology (historical linguistics), especially as a profession; a collector of words and their etymologies.
    • Foucault's incisive scrutiny and consistent analysis of antique culture has opened the eyes of many a philosopher, philologist or anthropologist who considered himself an expert on the very texts and issues that Foucault addresses. In the years following the publication of Foucault's works an...2013, Vigdis Songe-Møller, Philosophy Without Women: The Birth of Sexism in Western Thought, page 130, pub. A&C Black, isbn: 978-1-84714-350-1
  2. A person devoted to general learning and literature.
    • Like Johnson, in Herculean might,
      Bid some philologist arise,—
      Some Milton, with seraphic flight,
      Or Newton, pupil of the skies.1827, Lydia Sigourney, Poems, On visiting the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville, page 125
    • The author of the first text in which the term ‘philosophy of technology’ occurred, Ernst Kapp’s Eine Philosophie der Technik, was a philologist and historian. Most of the authors who wrote critically about technology and its socio-cultural role during the twentieth century were philosophers of a...2015, Franssen, Maarten, Lokhorst, Gert-Jan and van de Poel, Ibo, "Philosophy of Technology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)...
  3. A person devoted to classical scholarship.
    • For Zhu Xi's explanation of the phrase “ge wu,” see his commentary on Great Learning... For Wang's interpretation, see his “Questions on the Great Learning”... Unfortunately, the key word “ge” is highly ambiguous, so both interpretations ... are completely defensible... Nivison... described the...2015, Van Norden, Bryan, "Wang Yangming", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/wang-yangming

philologist meaning in Hindi, Sanskrit and Tagalog

philologist in Hindi

person who engages in philology
भाषाविद bhāṣāvid

philologist in Sanskrit

a philologist, grammarian
शाब्द śābdá

philologist in Tagalog

person who engages in philology
palawika

Synonyms of philologist

Forms of philologist

pluralphilologists

Origin of philologist

From philology + -ist.

Questions about philologist

What does philologist mean?
Philologist means a person who engages in philology (historical linguistics), especially as a profession; a collector of words and their etymologies.
What is philologist in Hindi?
Philologist in Hindi is भाषाविद (bhāṣāvid). See Philologist meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is philologist?
Philologist is a noun.
What is the plural of philologist?
The plural of philologist is philologists.

Words near philologist in the dictionary

  1. philologies
  2. philologise
  3. philologised
  4. philologises
  5. philologising
  6. philologist
  7. philologistic
  8. philologists
  9. philologize
  10. philologized
  11. philologizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: philologist (page history and authors); शाब्द (Sanskrit) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-philologist.wav.

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