the literati

noun

: educated people who know about and are interested in literature
a new novelist who has been embraced by the literati

Examples of the literati in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Throughout the 20th century, while historical fiction produced plenty of bestsellers, the literati tended, with grudging exceptions, to look down upon historical fiction as middlebrow escapism. Sam Sacks, WSJ, 28 Dec. 2023 Bashevis’s nephew Maurice Carr, in his memoir, recounts a family reunion at a writers’ retreat in 1926, when the literati were already swirling around Bashevis. The New Yorker, 18 Dec. 2023 Although Roth preserved the author’s anonymity, many of the literati of the late Weimar era would have known who wrote this wryly ironic tale of a young man fumbling his way through the war years. Johannes Von Moltke, The New York Review of Books, 2 Nov. 2023 But Ward’s daily life does not consist of rubbing elbows with the literati in their New York haunts. Imani Perry, New York Times, 13 Oct. 2023 What was supporting the grand mansions and the literati in England in the middle of the 19th century? Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2023 The Powells became mainstays of Greenwich Village social life in the 1920s, where the literati would gather and Ernest Hemingway could unexpectedly climb through an apartment window. cleveland, 23 Aug. 2023 An obscure figure with a cultish following for much of his writing life, McCarthy had long been esteemed by members of the literati. Caine O'Rear, Rolling Stone, 3 July 2023 Though the literati might ignore it, Yellowstone’s appeal is easy to understand. Daniel Bessner, The New Republic, 14 Nov. 2022

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'the literati.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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Cite this Entry

“The literati.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20literati. Accessed 25 Apr. 2024.

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