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erudition

/ˌɛɹʊˈdɪʃən/noun

erudition is a noun meaning “Profound knowledge acquired from learning and scholarship” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled E-R-U-D-I-T-I-O-N and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of erudition is eruditions.

What does erudition mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Profound knowledge acquired from learning and scholarship.

  2. 2

    The refinement, polish and knowledge that education confers.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce erudition?

  • /ˌɛɹʊˈdɪʃən/
  • /ˌɛɹuˈdɪʃən/
  • /ˌɛɹəˈdɪʃən/

Erudition has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-erudition.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of erudition

  • eruditions plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is erudition?

Erudition appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 60,074th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Erudition in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense profound knowledge, especially that based on learning and scholarship:

LanguageWords
Frenchérudition
GermanBelesenheit, Gelehrtheit, Bildung, Gelehrsamkeit
Portugueseerudição
Spanisherudición

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does erudition come from?

First attested in the 15th Century. From Middle French érudition, from Latin eruditio (“an instructing, learning, erudition”), from erudire (“to instruct, educate, cultivate”, literally “free from rudeness”), from e (“out”) + rudis (“rude”). By surface analysis, erudite + -ion.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).