Polumath

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who has acquired knowledge across a great many different fields of study
2. A person whose learning spans numerous disciplines and branches of knowledge
3. An individual possessing broad and deep expertise over a wide range of subjects

Etymology: In ancient Greek, "polumathēs" was an ordinary adjective meaning "having learned much," built from "polys," meaning "many" or "much," and "manthanein," meaning "to learn." The spelling with "u" is a literal transliteration of the Greek letter upsilon, which English usually renders as "y." The same root "manth-" produced "mathēma," "that which is learned," which became the source of English "mathematics." The English word was taken directly from Greek as a learned term, so it keeps the original sense of a person who has absorbed knowledge across many fields.