Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person who speaks several languages fluently.
  • noun A specialist in linguistics.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An interpreter.
  • noun A person skilled in the use of languages; one who can speak several languages.
  • noun A student of language; a philologist.
  • noun A master of language or talk; a ready converser or talker.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete A master of the use of language; a talker.
  • noun A person skilled in languages.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who studies linguistics.
  • noun A person skilled in languages.
  • noun A human translator; an interpreter, especially in the armed forces.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a person who speaks more than one language
  • noun a specialist in linguistics

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin lingua, language; see dn̥ghū- in Indo-European roots + –ist.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin lingua ("tongue") + -ist.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "Tree?" Sally said. "I fell out of a tree today. On a linguist."

    -- Connie Willis, "Blued Moon"

    May 21, 2008