What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Erudite vs Bookish - What's the difference?

erudite | bookish |

As adjectives the difference between erudite and bookish

is that erudite is while bookish is given to reading; fond of study; better acquainted with books than with people; learned from books.

erudite

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Learned, scholarly, with emphasis on knowledge gained from books.
  • * 1850 , , Ch. XII:
  • At all events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind.
  • * 1913 , , The Custom of the Country , ch. 43:
  • Elmer Moffatt had been magnificent, rolling out his alternating effects of humour and pathos, stirring his audience by moving references to the Blue and the Gray, convulsing them by a new version of Washington and the Cherry Tree . . ., dazzling them by his erudite allusions and apt quotations.
  • * 2006 , Jeff Israely, " Preaching Controversy," Time , 17 Sept.:
  • Perhaps his erudite mind does not quite yet grasp how to transform his beloved scholarly explorations into effective papal politics.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    bookish

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Given to reading; fond of study; better acquainted with books than with people; learned from books.
  • * 1783 , , The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ?, page 16
  • From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a printer, though he had already one son (James) of that profession.
  • Characterized by a method of expression generally found in books.
  • * 1996 , Helen L. Harrison, Pistoles/Paroles: Money and Language in Seventeenth-century French Comedy? , page 50
  • Obviously, neither Corneille nor the characters who laugh at excessively bookish speech avoid literary convention.

    Synonyms

    * (characterized by expression found in books) formal, labored, literary, pedantic

    Derived terms

    * bookishly * bookishness

    See also

    * nerd

    Anagrams

    *