Definition: An erudite is an individual with deep knowledge about a particular subject. It is a person with extensive theoretical studies and training.
What Does Erudite Mean?
Contents
The term erudite comes from the Latin word ērudītus, which means educated, instructed or skilled. In academic circles, an erudite is considered to be a person that has a vast amount of knowledge and information about a particular subject. It will normally be described as someone that holds many academic degrees and has also invested a lot of time researching the topic.
These individuals are well-known on their fields and they have enough credibility to issue strong opinions about their area of expertise. An erudite can also be described as a person with an eager desire to increase his knowledge, they spend most of their time reading and researching, they have a highly refined vocabulary and in some cases they might be introverts.
They are highly useful in both the academic and the productive field since their knowledge can be of major help in different situations where a deep study of a particular subject is needed.
Example
Mr. Clement is a well known academic that lives in Boston. He is 59 years old and he has spent the last 30 years of his life studying nanotechnology. He holds three different academic degrees from Harvard University. One of them is a Bachelor in Biology, and the other two are a Masters in Science of Microbiology and a PHD in Biotechnology.
He has published two books about nanotechnology and he’s constantly participating as a speaker in conferences and lectures about nanotechnology. He spends most of his time reading about new breakthroughs in the field and new applications for this technology. He also works as a consultant for many different companies and he has a permanent teaching position at Harvard University.
According to this description and the concept we previously studied, Mr. Clement should be considered an erudite in the field of nanotechnology.
