SAVANT

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does savant mean? 

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

1. someone who has been admitted to membership in a scholarly field

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• SAVANT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who has been admitted to membership in a scholarly field

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

initiate; learned person; pundit; savant

Hypernyms ("savant" 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)

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

polymath (a person of great and varied learning)

 Context examples 

By some good fortune we discovered about this time that both our savants had the very poorest opinion of Dr. Illingworth of Edinburgh.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His conversation, I remember, was about the Bertillon system of measurements, and he expressed his enthusiastic admiration of the French savant.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Perhaps Professor Summerlee may have an observation to make, he said, and the two savants ascended together into some rarefied scientific atmosphere, where the possibilities of a modification of the birth-rate were weighed against the decline of the food supply as a check in the struggle for existence.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)