Linguist

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈlɪŋɡwɪst/

Definitions

1. An expert in language examines its various aspects while often mastering multiple tongues to enhance intercultural understanding and communication effectiveness
2. A professional who studies and analyzes language demonstrates expertise in its structure and function while often being fluent in several languages to facilitate communication across cultures
3. A person who studies the nature, structure, and development of languages ; an individual able to speak several languages fluently

Etymology: "Linguist" is built from Latin "lingua," meaning "tongue," which is the same word that gave English "language" and "lingual." Its Latin root has an older form, "dingua," showing that the word for tongue has been part of the Indo-European family of languages for a very long time. In Latin, a tongue was literally the organ in your mouth, and only later did the same word come to mean the speech that organ produces. The "-ist" ending is a Greek-derived suffix that passed through Latin "-ista" and Old French "-iste" before reaching English, where it marks a person who practices or studies something. So a linguist is, at root, someone who deals with tongues, a meaning that is easy to overlook once the word has been used for speech for centuries.

Synonyms: polyglot, language expert