Linguistics

//lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪks// noun

noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The systematic and scholarly study of language. uncountable

    "a branch of linguistics"

  2. 2
    the humanistic study of language and literature wordnet
  3. 3
    the scientific study of language wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
glossologyspeechlorebowwow theorycomparative linguisticsderivationdescriptive linguistics

Example

More examples

"Professor Ito went to the United States for the purpose of studying linguistics."

Etymology

Etymology tree Latin lingua English -ist English linguist English -ics English linguistics From linguist + -ics, akin to linguistic and Latin linguisticus, coined by English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell in 1847 from German Linguistik.

Related phrases

algebraic linguisticsapplied linguisticsarmchair linguisticsclinical linguisticscognitive linguisticscomparative linguisticscomputational linguisticscontact linguisticscontrastive linguisticscorpus linguisticscritical applied linguisticsculinary linguistics

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