as in essays
a long piece of writing about a particular subject that is done to earn an advanced degree at a university
He wrote his dissertation on an obscure 16th-century poet.
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Recent Examples of dissertations
The plush red seats of the Concertgebouw's main auditorium are occupied by students cramming for upcoming exams and finishing dissertations as classical music fills the hall.
—
ABC News, 26 Mar. 2026
Then there’s the rapid advance of image models, and models that can write poetry, and fiction, and dissertations, and ads, and policy papers.
—John Werner, Forbes.com, 5 Jan. 2026
People would devote entire dissertations to developing techniques for distinguishing handwritten digits or for recognizing faces in images; then a deep-learning algorithm would digest the underlying data, discover the subtleties of the problem, and make those projects seem obsolete.
—James Somers, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
ABC News, 26 Mar. 2026
Then there’s the rapid advance of image models, and models that can write poetry, and fiction, and dissertations, and ads, and policy papers.
—John Werner, Forbes.com, 5 Jan. 2026
People would devote entire dissertations to developing techniques for distinguishing handwritten digits or for recognizing faces in images; then a deep-learning algorithm would digest the underlying data, discover the subtleties of the problem, and make those projects seem obsolete.
—James Somers, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for dissertations
Noun
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This is the latest edition of The Critics, our weekly roundup of critical reviews, essays, and conversations.—
Jasmine Vojdani,
Vulture,
24 Apr. 2026
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By the turn of the 21st century, many newspapers had expanded the role of the op-ed page to their editorial pages, sometimes surrendering space normally reserved for the newspaper’s editorials for essays and letters from contributors and readers.—
Encyclopedia Britannica,
Encyclopedia Britannica,
23 Apr. 2026
Noun
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To go with touring, acting, and writing, Gaffigan also does commentaries for CBS Sunday Morning.—
Patrick Damp,
CBS News,
22 Apr. 2026
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While Bright Lights is a clinically sound and narratively solid depiction of a sickness, this movie adaptation lacks the novel’s deliciously acerbic descriptions of New York’s sick social scene as well as its protagonist’s self-aware commentaries.—
Duane Byrge,
HollywoodReporter,
1 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Skyhorse has since published a dozen or so books by Kennedy, including a memoir and several more anti-vaccine treatises.—
Tom Bartlett,
The Atlantic,
5 Apr. 2026
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The text consists of 10 treatises on architecture, engineering and urban planning, and is the oldest surviving work written on the subject.—
Andrea Margolis,
FOXNews.com,
28 Jan. 2026
Noun
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Lai, an outspoken critic of China’s ruling Communist Party who founded the now-defunct newspaper Apple Daily, was convicted in December of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
21 Apr. 2026
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Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.—
Dennis Romero,
NBC news,
20 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Read more about that here and check out theses photos of the behemoth that carries rockets around the space center.—
Roger Simmons,
The Orlando Sentinel,
18 Mar. 2026
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The discipline has built a vast array of empirical theses deep inside this single ideology—liberalism—and, in doing so, has naturalized it.—
Jason Blakely,
Harpers Magazine,
30 Dec. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Dissertations.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dissertations. Accessed 26 Apr. 2026.
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