Meanings
plural scholiasts
- A scholar who writes commentary on the works of an author, especially one of the ancient commentators on classical authors.
[N]o pedantic quotations from Talmudists and scholiasts […] ever marred the effect of his grave and temperate discourses.
1851, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XIV, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume III, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC2 more examples
[L]ike it or not, I was caught up once more in the scholiast’s game, paring popular notions of the ‘queer’ and ‘unearthly’ from notions of the ‘monstrous’.
1981, John Gardner, Freddy's Book, Abacus, published 1982, page 8The scholiast on Il. 1.5 likewise notes that Zeus chose the Trojan War, ‘since he could have destroyed them all by thunderbolts or floods’.
2025 December 12, Tom Hercules Davies, “Horses, Wheels, Languages: Greek, Mesopotamian and Indic Epic on the Eurasian Steppe”, in The Classical Quarterly, volume 75, number 1, page 17
Origin
- Ancient Greekσχόλιον
- Medieval Greekσχολιαστής
- Late Latinscholiasta
- Englishscholiast
From Late Latin scholiasta, from Medieval Greek σχολιαστής (skholiastḗs), from σχολιάζειν (skholiázein), from Ancient Greek σχόλιον (skhólion).
More words from Late Latin, Medieval Greek, Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
scholiast. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scholiast
“scholiast.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scholiast. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “scholiast,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scholiast.
Source: scholiast on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.