liberal arts

pl.n.1. Academic disciplines, including literature, history, languages, philosophy, mathematics, and general sciences, viewed in contrast to professional and technical disciplines.2. The disciplines comprising the trivium and quadrivium.

[Middle English, translation of Medieval Latin artēs liberālēs, the trivium and quadrivium : Latin artēs, pl. of ars, subject of study + līberālēs, pl. of līberālis, proper to free persons.]

liberal arts

pl n (Education) the fine arts, humanities, sociology, languages, and literature. Often shortened to: arts

lib′eral arts′

n.pl. 1. academic college courses providing general knowledge and comprising the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. 2. (during the Middle Ages) studies comprising the quadrivium and trivium. [1745–55; translation of Latin artēs līberālēs works befitting a free man]

Thesaurus

Noun

liberal arts - studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills); "the college of arts and sciences"arts, humanistic discipline, humanitiesdiscipline, field of study, subject area, subject field, bailiwick, subject, field, study - a branch of knowledge; "in what discipline is his doctorate?"; "teachers should be well trained in their subject"; "anthropology is the study of human beings"neoclassicism - revival of a classical style (in art or literature or architecture or music) but from a new perspective or with a new motivationclassicalism, classicism - a movement in literature and art during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe that favored rationality and restraint and strict forms; "classicism often derived its models from the ancient Greeks and Romans"Romantic Movement, Romanticism - a movement in literature and art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that celebrated nature rather than civilization; "Romanticism valued imagination and emotion over rationality"English - the discipline that studies the English language and literaturehistory - the discipline that records and interprets past events involving human beings; "he teaches Medieval history"; "history takes the long view"art history - the academic discipline that studies the development of painting and sculpturechronology - the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past eventsbeaux arts, fine arts - the study and creation of visual works of artperforming arts - arts or skills that require public performanceOccidentalism - the scholarly knowledge of western cultures and languages and peopleOriental Studies, Orientalism - the scholarly knowledge of Asian cultures and languages and peoplephilosophy - the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethicsliterary study - the humanistic study of literaturelibrary science - the study of the principles and practices of library administrationphilology, linguistics - the humanistic study of language and literaturemusicology - the scholarly and scientific study of musicSinology - the study of Chinese history and language and culturestemmatics, stemmatology - the humanistic discipline that attempts to reconstruct the transmission of a text (especially a text in manuscript form) on the basis of relations between the various surviving manuscripts (sometimes using cladistic analysis); "stemmatology also plays an important role in musicology"; "transcription errors are of decisive importance in stemmatics"trivium - (Middle Ages) an introductory curriculum at a medieval university involving grammar and logic and rhetoric; considered to be a triple way to eloquencequadrivium - (Middle Ages) a higher division of the curriculum in a medieval university involving arithmetic and music and geometry and astronomy

liberal arts

liberal arts,

term originally used to designate the arts or studies suited to freemen. It was applied in the Middle Ages to seven branches of learning, the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The study of the trivium led to the Bachelor of Arts degree, and the quadrivium to the Master of Arts. During the Renaissance, the term was interpreted more broadly to mean all of those studies that impart a general, as opposed to a vocational or specialized, education. This corresponds rather closely to the interpretation used in most undergraduate colleges today, although the curriculum of the latter is more flexible than that of the Renaissance university.

Bibliography

See M. Van Doren, Liberal Education (1959); J. Barzun, The Teacher in America (1945); Harvard Committee, General Education in a Free Society (1945); T. Woody, Liberal Education for Free Men (1951); A. W. Griswold, Liberal Education and the Democratic Ideal (1959, rev. ed. 1962); C. Weinberg, Humanistic Foundations of Education (1972); B. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers (1986); writings of Robert Maynard HutchinsHutchins, Robert Maynard,
1899–1977, American educator, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., studied at Oberlin College, grad. Yale, 1921, taught in the Yale law school (1925–27), and served as dean (1927–29). He became president of the Univ.
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liberal arts

liberal arts

liberal arts

lib′eral arts′

liberal arts

liberal arts,

Bibliography

liberal arts

Synonyms for liberal arts

noun studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills)

Synonyms

Related Words