A pantomath is a person who wants to know or knows everything. The word itself is not to be found in common online English dictionaries, the OED, dictionaries of obscure words, or dictionaries of neologisms.
Etymology
A pantomath (pantomathēs, παντομαθής, meaning "having learnt all", from the Greek roots παντ- "all", "every" and the root μαθ-, meaning "learning", "understanding") is a person whose astonishingly wide interests and knowledge span the entire range of the arts and sciences.
Uses
Pantomath is typically used to convey the sense that a great individual has achieved a pinnacle of learning, that an "automath" has taken autodidacticism to an endpoint. As an example, the obscure and rare term seems to have been applied to those with an astonishingly wide knowledge and interests by these two authors from different eras: Jonathan Miller has been called a pantomath,2 as has Rupert Hart-Davis.3
See also
Notes
External links
- Excerpts from a discussion of the word at Wordsmith.org:
- Excerpt one[permanent dead link]
- Excerpt two[permanent dead link]
Reference
- Wikipedia
References
"pantomath" @ OneLook.com - metasearch across 1,000+ dictionaries returns no hits other than this article. http://onelook.com/?w=pantomath&scwo=1&sswo=1 ↩
Jackson, Kevin (11 July 2004). "Cover Story: Clever is as clever does". The Independent on Sunday. pp. 6–9. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022. Retrieved 3 December 2020. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/dr-jonathan-miller-clever-is-as-clever-does-46979.html ↩
Lyttleton Letters Annos I http://lhdletters.inwriting.org/annos1.shtml ↩