Donnish

adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Characteristic of a university don. UK

    "The proctor was a gentlemanly, straight-forward looking man of about thirty, not at all donnish, and his address answered to his appearance."

  2. 2
    Bookish, theoretical and pedantic, as opposed to practical.

    "The new engineer had a donnish air, and found it difficult to communicate with the workers in the factory."

Adjective
  1. 1
    marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning especially its trivial aspects wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
pedanticacademicacademicbibliophagicbluestockingbook-fed

Example

More examples

"The proctor was a gentlemanly, straight-forward looking man of about thirty, not at all donnish, and his address answered to his appearance."

Etymology

From don (professor) + -ish.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.