erudition

knowledge, learning, erudition, scholarship mean what is or can be known by an individual or by humankind. knowledge applies to facts or ideas acquired by study, investigation, observation, or experience.

• • rich in the knowledge of human nature

learning applies to knowledge acquired especially through formal, often advanced, schooling.

• • a book that demonstrates vast learning

erudition strongly implies the acquiring of profound, recondite, or bookish learning.

• • an erudition unusual even in a scholar

scholarship implies the possession of learning characteristic of the advanced scholar in a specialized field of study or investigation.

• • a work of first-rate literary scholarship