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learned

adjectiveverbadjectivecommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈlɜːnɪd//
  • United Kingdom//ˈlɜːnd//
  • United States//ˈlɝnɪd//
  • United States//ˈlɝnd//

Having much learning, knowledgeable, erudite; highly educated.

adjective

  1. 1

    Having much learning, knowledgeable, erudite; highly educated.

    the learned Merlin, well could tell, / Vnder what coast of heauen the man did dwell […]

    My learned Brother Cresswell directed the jury to make the calculation […]

    The book opens with the Time Traveler dining with learned peers in late 1800s England, where he is trying to convince them that he has invented a time machine.

    HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW used to be both the best-known poet in the English-speaking world and the most beloved, adored by the learned and the lowly ...

  2. 2

    A courteous description used in various ways to refer to lawyers or judges.

  3. 3

    Scholarly, exhibiting scholarship.

    But our limits will not permit us to discuss the many important and curious questions respecting the science of government, to which this learned work invites attention.

Etymology

From Middle English lerned, lernd, lernyd, equivalent to learn + -ed, which replaced the earlier lered (“taught”), from Old English (ġe)lǣred, past participle of lǣran (“to teach”). Learn formerly had the meaning “to teach”, which is now found only in nonstandard speech, as well as its standard meaning of “to learn”.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of learnsimple past and past participle of learn

Etymology

Past participle of learn.

adjective

  1. 1

    Derived from experience; acquired by learning.

    Everyday behavior is an overlay of learned behavior over instinct.

Forms

comparative
more learned
superlative
most learned
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).