education

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or process of educating or being educated.
2. n. The knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a learning process.
3. n. A program of instruction of a specified kind or level: driver education; a college education.
4. n. The field of study that is concerned with the pedagogy of teaching and learning.
5. n. An instructive or enlightening experience: Her work in the inner city was a real education.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The imparting or acquisition of knowledge; mental and moral training; cultivation of the mind, feelings, and manners. Education in a broad sense, with reference to man, comprehends all that disciplines and enlightens the understanding, corrects the temper, cultivates the taste, and forms the manners and habits; in a narrower sense, it is the special course of training pursued, as by parents or teachers, to secure any one or all of these ends. Under physical education is included all that relates to the development and care of the organs of sensation and of the muscular and nervous system. Intellectual education comprehends the means by which the powers of the understanding are developed and improved, and knowledge is imparted. Esthetic education is the development of the sense of the beautiful, and of technical skill in the arts. Moral education is the cultivation of the moral nature. Technical education is intended to train persons in the arts and sciences that underlie the practice of the trades or professions. Education is further divided into primary education, or instruction in the first elements of knowledge, received by children in common or elementary schools or at home; secondary, that received in grammar and high schools or in academies; higher, that received in colleges, universities, and postgraduate study; and special or professional, that which aims to fit one for the particular vocation or profession in which he is to engage. With reference to animals, the word is used in the narrowest sense of training in useful or amusing acts or habits.
2. n. The rearing of animals, especially bees, silkworms, or the like; culture, as of bacteria in experimenting; a brood or collection of cultivated creatures.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable The process or art of imparting knowledge, skill and judgment.
2. n. countable Facts, skills and ideas that have been learned, either formally or informally.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act or process of educating; the result of educating, as determined by the knowledge skill, or discipline of character, acquired; also, the act or process of training by a prescribed or customary course of study or discipline

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the result of good upbringing (especially knowledge of correct social behavior)
2. n. the gradual process of acquiring knowledge
3. n. knowledge acquired by learning and instruction
4. n. the activities of educating or instructing; activities that impart knowledge or skill
5. n. the United States federal department that administers all federal programs dealing with education (including federal aid to educational institutions and students); created 1979
6. n. the profession of teaching (especially at a school or college or university)