Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The study of the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The science of languages, or of the origin and history of words; the general and comparative study of human languages and of their elements. Also called comparative philology.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The science of languages, or of the origin, signification, and application of words; glossology.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The scientific study of language.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the humanistic study of language and literature
  • noun the scientific study of language

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

linguist +‎ -ics

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