Pseudo-scholarship
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any body of publications purported to be scholarly or supported by critical scholarship but which fails to comply with scholarly standards. uncountable
"[…] if we had possessed much more of the patristic history and literature, our pseudo-scholarship, the natural worship of antiquity, and the spirit of prelatic superstition, would only have used them as so many stronger entrenchments […] ('Mr. Cooper's "Free Church of Ancient Christendom"', The Monthly Christian spectator, September 1852, p. 518http://books.google.com/books?id=oxw2AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA518&dq=pseudo-scholarship&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1900&as_brr=3&cd=5#v=onepage&q=pseudo-scholarship&f=false)"
- 2 An arrangement that in effect grants a scholarship to a student, without being considered on a par with a real or standard scholarship countable
"[…] the exceptional close Scholarships would be felt to be something less honourable than the average Scholarship, in fact, as a sort of Pseudo-scholarship. (Report and evidence upon the recommendations of Her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the state of the University of Oxford presented to the Board of Heads of Houses and Proctors, December 1, 1853, Oxford University Press, 1853, p. 430)"
Example
More examples"[…] if we had possessed much more of the patristic history and literature, our pseudo-scholarship, the natural worship of antiquity, and the spirit of prelatic superstition, would only have used them as so many stronger entrenchments […] ('Mr. Cooper's "Free Church of Ancient Christendom"', The Monthly Christian spectator, September 1852, p. 518http://books.google.com/books?id=oxw2AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA518&dq=pseudo-scholarship&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1900&as_brr=3&cd=5#v=onepage&q=pseudo-scholarship&f=false)"
Etymology
From pseudo- + scholarship. 19th-century coinage.
Related phrases
More for "pseudo-scholarship"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.