academic

1 of or relating to schooling or learning especially at an advanced level “If you spent more time in academic pursuits and less time in social ones, you could easily make good grades,” the dean told Valerie Synonyms educational, intellectual, scholarly, scholastic Related Words bookish, donnish, geeky, nerdish, nerdy, pedagogical (also pedagogic), pedantic, professorial, tweedy; curricular; educative, instructive; collegiate, graduate, postgraduate Near Antonyms cocurricular, extracurricular; noncollegiate Antonyms nonacademic, noneducational, unacademic, unscholarly

2 very learned or educated but inexperienced in practical matters academic thinkers who have no understanding of realpolitik Synonyms ivory-tower, ivory-towered, ivory-towerish Related Words cerebral, eggheaded, highbrow, intellectual Near Antonyms astute, canny, clear-sighted, hardheaded, hard-nosed, knowing, sharp, sharp-witted, shrewd, tough-minded

3 existing only as an assumption or speculation your arguments are merely academic—such a worst-case scenario is unlikely to ever occur Synonyms theoretical (also academical), conjectural, hypothetical, speculative, suppositionalRelated Words alleged, assumed, presumed, presupposed, proposed, supposed, unproved, unproven, untested; debatable, moot; abstract, conceptual, intellectual, metaphysical; nonclinical, nonpractical; nonempiricalNear Antonyms clinical, practical; concrete, defined, definite, distinct; attested, authenticated, confirmed, demonstrated, established, proven, substantiated, tested, time-tested, validated, verified; empirical (also empiric), nonspeculative, nontheoretical, observationalAntonyms actual, factual, real