Scient

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Archaic term describing someone who possesses knowledge, understanding or practical skill in a particular matter
2. Having learned or informed understanding of something, often used in older writing to mean knowing well
3. Knowing or skilled, an obsolete adjective for a person who is well informed and practiced in an area

Etymology: "Scient" is a rare English adjective meaning knowing or skilled, and it reaches English from Latin "sciens," the present participle of "scire," "to know." That participle is built on "scio," "I know," which gives the word its direct sense of someone who is in possession of knowledge. The word is also a close relative of "scion." Both trace back to the same Latin verb, so a scion, originally a shoot or twig taken for grafting, and a scient, a person who knows, share a root. The link is easy to miss because the two words took very different paths into English, one through the idea of offspring and one through the idea of understanding.