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 σχολεῖον (skholeîon), from 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 +‎ -er. Compare Saterland Frisian Sköiler, Middle Low German schȫlære, schȫlere, schȫler (> modern German Low German Schöler), Dutch scholier, German Schüler.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈskɒlə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈskɑlɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɒlə(r)

• Audio (UK)

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scholar (plural scholars)

1. A student; one who studies at school or college, typically having a scholarship.
2. A specialist in a particular branch of knowledge.
3. A learned person; a bookman.
   • 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.

• (student): pupil, student
• (specialist): expert, specialist
• (learned person): academic, learned person, savant, scholarly person

• scholiast

• savant

• scholar in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• scholar in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

• chorals, lorchas, orchals