Book-learning
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Theoretical or academic knowledge acquired by reading books or through formal education, as opposed to practical or empirical knowledge of real life and the real world, gained through experience, or natively as street smarts, common sense, or intuition. uncountable
"They are like some wise men, who, learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, Universal Love, and Mercy, […] and who, looking upward at the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and book-learning."
Example
More examples"They are like some wise men, who, learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, Universal Love, and Mercy, […] and who, looking upward at the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and book-learning."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.