polymath
noun

- a person of encyclopedic learning

Merriam-Webster

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ORIGIN

A polymath (from Greek polymathes = having learned much, knowing much) is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. The term was first used in the 17th century. Polyhistor is an older term with a similar meaning.

Polymath is often used to describe those great thinkers of the Renaissance and the Golden Age of Islam, each of whom excelled at several fields in science and the arts, including people like Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Omar Khayyám.

These thinkers represented an idea that emerged in Renaissance Italy, expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti, who said that “a man can do all things if he will.”

The explosion of knowledge has made the polymath an extinct species, which doesn’t stop superstars like Franklin Story Musgrave appearing like one...

Musgrave (now 85) is a decorated Marine, an aviation expert, a test pilot, an experimental parachutist with over 500 free falls, and an astronaut. He’s a mathematician, a surgeon, and a professor of physiology and biophysics, he has an MBA in operations analysis and an MA in literature. As if that was not enough, he was the only astronaut to have flown on all five space shuttles; totalling over 1,200 hours in orbit.

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SYNONYMS

genius, homo universalis, mastermind, prodigy, brains, brainbox, brainiac, buff, Einstein, highbrow, egghead, whizz, mental giant, rocket scientist, clever clogs, alpha geek, walking encyclopedia, homo universalis

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Practice OWAD in an English conversation, say something like:

“With Google at one’s fingertips, anyone can appear POLYMATHIC in a zoom meeting.”

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A shout-out to Florian for suggesting today’s word,…

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Paul Smith