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It’s no hot take to say that the original pundits were highly learned scholars and teachers in India; it’s just a statement of fact. Our English word pundit comes from the Hindi word paṇḍit, a term of respect (and sometimes an honorary title) for a wise person, especially one with knowledge of philosophy, religion, and law; its ultimate source is the Sanskrit word paṇḍita, meaning “learned.” English speakers have used pundit to refer to sages of India since the 1600s, but as is typically done with English, they eventually pushed the word into new semantic territory. By the late 1800s, pundit could also refer to a member of what is sometimes called the commentariat or punditocracy—that is, the collective group of political commentators, financial analysts, and newspaper columnists often paid to share their views on a variety of subjects.
Examples of pundit in a Sentence
Tim Spiers, New York Times, 28 Jan. 2026
Rittenhouse has since become a gun rights advocate, and the shooting of Pretti prompted some national pundits to compare his exercise of Second Amendment rights to Pretti’s.
—Paul Kiefer, jsonline.com, 28 Jan. 2026
Many of the most popular sports pundits cast off analytics as superfluous nerd drivel.
—Brady Brickner-Wood, New Yorker, 28 Jan. 2026
The Times of London has been worn, somewhat comically, as a badge of sophistication by American Anglophiles—the right-wing pundit George F.
—Sean Williams, Harpers Magazine, 27 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for pundit
Cite this Entry
“Pundit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pundit. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
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