linguistician

English

Etymology

linguistic +‎ -ian

Noun

linguistician (plural linguisticians)

1. (rare) A linguist.
   • 1950, Robert Anderson Hall, Leave Your Language Alone!, page 113:

     The ideal situation is that in which a trained linguistician devotes all his time and attention to describing his own language; he can then be his own source of information (or informant) and can, over the years, note down all the forms, all the types of utterances, of which he normally makes use, and then analyze, classify, and describe them completely. No one has ever wholly measured up to this ideal, and perhaps it is an ideal impossible of complete attainment; the closest that anyone has ever come to it was in the description which the Hindu grammarian Panini wrote of Sanskrit, the language of the Old Indian hymns of the Vedas.

   • 2004, Jean Aitchison, Teach Yourself Linguistics:

     A person who studies linguistics is usually referred to as a linguist. The more accurate term 'linguistician' is too much of a tongue-twister to become generally accepted.

Anagrams

• anilinguistic, unitalicising