erudite

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 4, 2020 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>erudite</strong> &#149; \AIR-uh-dyte\&nbsp; &#149; <em>adjective</em><br /> <p><strong>:</strong> having or showing knowledge that is gained by studying</p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>"And so the arguments about animal minds went on, often technical, sometimes absurd, at times brilliant, in many guises and versions. They were catalogued and analyzed at length by Pierre Bayle…. (Bayle was a Protestant also living in exile in Holland, an <em>erudite</em> scholar and original thinker, and one of the great skeptics of the seventeenth century.)" — <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=rcpjAWNNiXYC&amp;pg=PA195#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">Noga Arikha, <em>Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours</em>, 2007</a></p> <p>"[Marilynne Robinson] narrates the ecology of the area and some of its human history, pointing out the generations of headstones hidden among a tiny sea of hills. She is formidably <em>erudite</em> but punctuates her speech with the surprisingly sweet refrain 'you know?'" — <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/05/marilynne-robinsons-essential-american-stories">Casey Cep, <em>The New Yorker</em>, 25 Sept. 2020</a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p><em>Erudite</em> derives from Latin <em>eruditus</em>, the past participle of the verb <em>erudire</em>, meaning "to instruct." A closer look at that verb shows that it is formed by combining the prefix <em>e-</em>, meaning "missing" or "absent," with the adjective <em>rudis</em>, which means "rude" or "ignorant." (<em>Rudis</em> is also the source of the English word <em><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rude">rude</a></em>.) We typically use <em>rude</em> to mean "discourteous" or "uncouth" but it can also mean "lacking refinement" or "uncivilized." Takin