“Coffee, the favorite drink of the civilized world.” – Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States
linguistics, philology
(noun) the humanistic study of language and literature
Source: WordNet® 3.1
philology (countable and uncountable, plural philologies)
(linguistics) The humanistic study of historical linguistics.
(philosophy) Love and study of learning and literature, broadly speaking.
(culture) Scholarship and culture, particularly classical, literary and linguistic.
Source: Wiktionary
Phi*lol"o*gy, n. Etym: [L. philologia love of learning, interpretation, philology, Gr. philologie. See Philologer.]
1. Criticism; grammatical learning. [R.] Johnson.
2. The study of language, especially in a philosophical manner and as a science; the investigation of the laws of human speech, the relation of different tongues to one another, and historical development of languages; linguistic science.
Note: Philology comprehends a knowledge of the etymology, or origin and combination of words; grammar, the construction of sentences, or use of words in language; criticism, the interpretation of authors, the affinities of different languages, and whatever relates to the history or present state of languages. It sometimes includes rhetoric, poetry, history, and antiquities.
3. A treatise on the science of language.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
3 April 2025
(noun) an assemblage of parts that is regarded as a single entity; “how big is that part compared to the whole?”; “the team is a unit”
“Coffee, the favorite drink of the civilized world.” – Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States