Library / English Dictionary

LINGUIST

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who speaks more than one language

Synonyms:

linguist; polyglot

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("linguist" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "linguist"):

bilingual; bilingualist (a person who speaks two languages fluently)

transcriber; translator (a person who translates written messages from one language to another)

Instance hyponyms:

Greenberg; Joseph Greenberg (United States linguist who studied the historical relations among 5,000 languages (1916-2001))

Harris; Zellig Harris; Zellig Sabbatai Harris (United States linguist (born in Ukraine) who developed mathematical linguistics and interpreted speech and writing in a social context (1909-1992))

Derivation:

linguistic (consisting of or related to language)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A specialist in linguistics

Synonyms:

linguist; linguistic scientist

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("linguist" is a kind of...):

scientist (a person with advanced knowledge of one or more sciences)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "linguist"):

sociolinguist (a linguist who studies the social and cultural factors that influence linguistic communication)

semanticist; semiotician (a specialist in the study of meaning)

psycholinguist (a person (usually a psychologist but sometimes a linguist) who studies the psychological basis of human language)

phonologist (a specialist in phonology)

phonetician (a specialist in phonetics)

neurolinguist (someone trained in neuroscience and linguistics who studies brain processes during language production and reception)

lexicographer; lexicologist (a compiler or writer of a dictionary; a student of the lexical component of language)

Hebraist (linguist specializing in the Hebrew language)

grammarian; syntactician (a linguist who specializes in the study of grammar and syntax)

computational linguist (someone trained in computer science and linguistics who uses computers for natural language processing)

Instance hyponyms:

Bloomfield; Leonard Bloomfield (United States linguist who adopted a behavioristic approach to linguistics (1887-1949))

A. Noam Chomsky; Chomsky; Noam Chomsky (United States linguist whose theory of generative grammar redefined the field of linguistics (born 1928))

de Saussure; Ferdinand de Saussure; Saussure (Swiss linguist and expert in historical linguistics whose lectures laid the foundations for synchronic linguistics (1857-1913))

Firth; J. R. Firth; John Rupert Firth (English linguist who contributed to linguistic semantics and to prosodic phonology and who was noted for his insistence on studying both sound and meaning in context (1890-1960))

Grimm; Jakob Grimm; Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm (the older of the two Grimm brothers remembered best for their fairy stories; also author of Grimm's law describing consonant changes in Germanic languages (1785-1863))

Jakobson; Roman Jakobson; Roman Osipovich Jakobson (United States linguist (born in Russia) noted for his description of the universals of phonology (1896-1982))

Jens Otto Harry Jespersen; Jespersen; Otto Jespersen (Danish linguist (1860-1943))

Edward Sapir; Sapir (anthropologist and linguist; studied languages of North American Indians (1884-1939))

Derivation:

linguistic (of or relating to the scientific study of language)

linguistics (the humanistic study of language and literature)

linguistics (the scientific study of language)

Credits