cognoscente

English

WOTD – 27 November 2008

Alternative forms

• conoscente (rare)

Etymology

From obsolete Italian cognoscente (modern Italian conoscente) from Latin cognōscere (“to know”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kɒnjəˈʃɛnti/, /ˌkɒnjəˈʃɛnti/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌkɑɡnəˈʃɛnti/, /ˌkɑnjəˈʃɛnti/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Homophone: cognoscenti

Noun

cognoscente (plural cognoscenti)

1. (often in the plural) Someone possessing superior or specialized knowledge in a particular field.

   Synonyms: aficionado, connoisseur, maven, connoisseur, authority, expert

   Antonym: novice

   • 1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XX, in Middlemarch […], volume II, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II:

     He is the painter who has been held to combine the most complete grace of form with sublimity of expression. Such at least I have gathered to be the opinion of cognoscenti.

   • 1904 November, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], Cabbages and Kings, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co.:

     He was a brilliant cosmopolite and a cognoscente of high rank; but, after all, he was of the same race and blood and instinct as this people.

   • 1998, Marc J. Seifer, chapter 42, in Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius, →ISBN, page 397:

     At night, as creative author, the cognoscente sketched out the first draft of his expanded autobiography.

   • 1998 September, Gary Wolf, “The World According to Woz”, in Wired‎^[1], archived from the original on 10 August 2011:

     This was before Wozniak—known among the cognoscenti as Woz—almost woke up the Pope by calling the Vatican on his famed illegal "blue box," before he invented the Apple II and helped launch the personal computer industry, and before he gave up his brilliant engineering career and became a public school teacher.

   • 2011, Patrick Spedding, James Lambert, “Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and the Myth of Metonymy”, in Studies in Philology, volume 108, number 1, page 117:

     In the latter case — if only a handful of people knew the term — it would have been pretty pointless for Cleland to name his protagonist Fanny when practically nobody was likely to get the joke, not even cognoscenti such as Grose.

   • 2018 August 19, Sean O’Hagan, quoting Irvine Welsh, “Irvine Welsh: ‘I thought Trainspotting would be a cult book, but not generation-defining’”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     The initial buzz it generated was among a certain section of the London cultural cognoscenti, the ex-punk crowd. They got it immediately.

   • 2019 May 11, Farah Nayeri, “Venice Biennale’s Top Prize Goes to Lithuania”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN:

     The Biennale can be daunting for those who are not art cognoscenti or participants in the art world.

   • 2020 December 30, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Cut HS2 eastern leg, says NIC?”, in Rail, page 3:

     And by the way, yes I AM inventing the HS2E acronym, because few outside the HS2 cognoscenti understand all that 'Phase' stuff!

Related terms

• cognition
• cognitive
• cognizance
• cognoscent

Translations

someone possessing specialized knowledge in a particular field

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 行家 (zh) (hángjiā)

• Czech: expert (cs) m, znalec (cs) m
• Dutch: kenner (nl), expert (nl)
• Finnish: asiantuntija (fi)
• French: connaisseur (fr) m, expert (fr) m
• German: Kenner (de) m, Kennerin (de) f
• Persian: اهل فن (fa) (ahl-e fan)
• Russian: знато́к (ru) m (znatók) (superior), экспе́рт (ru) m or f (ekspért) (specialized)
• Spanish: experto (es), conocedor (es) m
• Swedish: expert (sv) c, kännare (sv) c, förståsigpåare (sv) c

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /koɲ.ɲoʃˈʃɛn.te/
• Rhymes: -ɛnte
• Hyphenation: co‧gno‧scèn‧te

Participle

cognoscente m or f by sense (plural cognoscenti)

1. (obsolete) present participle of cognoscere

Spanish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /koɡnosˈθente/ [koɣ̞.nosˈθẽn̪.t̪e] (Spain)
• IPA^(key): /koɡnoˈsente/ [koɣ̞.noˈsẽn̪.t̪e] (Latin America, Philippines)
• Rhymes: -ente
• Syllabification: cog‧nos‧cen‧te

Adjective

cognoscente m or f (masculine and feminine plural cognoscentes)

1. cognitive

   Synonyms: cognitivo, cognoscitivo

Further reading

• “cognoscente”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024