philology

Noun

philology (countable and uncountable, plural philologies)

1. (US, especially) The humanistic study of texts and their languages, especially ancient or classical languages.
   • Philology and philosophy are treated as reciprocal. They exist on equal footing, and neither functions satisfactorily without the other. Their methods ... are opposite; philology attains to knowledge through induction, whereas philosophy starts from a concept. To formulate his concepts soundly, the...1968, John Paul Pritchard, On Interpretation and Criticism, University of Oklahoma Press
   • […]his early philosophical studies converged with his original love of philology as he pursued the “prehistory” of Kantian critique in Descartes, Galileo, and Copernicus, back to Plato.2016, Alan Kim, “Paul Natorp”, in Edward N. Zalta, editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
2. (Commonwealth, archaic, especially, rare) Historical or comparative linguistics.
3. (rare) Love and study of learning and literature, broadly speaking.
   • Indeed Philology properly is Terſe and Polite Learning, melior literatura (married long ſince by Martianus Capella to Mercury) being that Florid skill, containing onely the Roſes of learning, without the prickles thereof in which narrow ſenſe thorny Philoſophy is diſcharged as no part of Philology....a. 1662 (date written), Thomas Fuller, “Writers”, in The History of the Worthies of England, London: […] J[ohn] G[rismond,] W[illiam] L[eybourne] and W[illiam] G[odbid], published 1662, →OCLC, page 26