GENERALIST

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does generalist mean? 

• GENERALIST (noun)
  The noun GENERALIST has 1 sense:

1. a modern scholar who is in a position to acquire more than superficial knowledge about many different interests

  Familiarity information: GENERALIST used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GENERALIST (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A modern scholar who is in a position to acquire more than superficial knowledge about many different interests

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

generalist; Renaissance man

Context example:

a statistician has to be something of a generalist

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

bookman; scholar; scholarly person; student (a learned person (especially in the humanities); someone who by long study has gained mastery in one or more disciplines)

Antonym:

specialist (an expert who is devoted to one occupation or branch of learning)

 Context examples 

The graduate-prepared clinical specialist in home health nursing can and may be asked to perform all the functions of a generalist.

(Home Health Nurse Specialist, NCI Thesaurus)

The findings support the idea that dietary specialists are more vulnerable to changes in resource availability and environmental change than are more resilient generalists.

(Whaling and climate change lead to 100 years of feast or famine for Antarctic penguins, National Science Foundation)

Great tits – a close relation of North America’s chickadee – make a good study species as they are generalist insectivores that forage in flocks, and are known to spread other forms of information through observation.

(Birds learn from each other’s ‘disgust’, enabling insects to evolve bright colours, University of Cambridge)