humanities

hu·man·i·ty  (hy-mn-t)

n. pl. hu·man·i·ties

1. Humans considered as a group; the human race.

2. The condition or quality of being human.

3. The quality of being humane; benevolence.

4. A humane characteristic, attribute, or act.

5. humanities

a. The languages and literatures of ancient Greece and Rome; the classics.

b. Those branches of knowledge, such as philosophy, literature, and art, that are concerned with human thought and culture; the liberal arts.

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[Middle English humanite, from Old French, from Latin hmnits, from hmnus, human; see human.]

Thesaurus

Noun

1.

humanities - studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills); "the college of arts and sciences" arts, humanistic discipline, liberal arts discipline, 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 motivation classicalism, 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 literature history - 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 sculpture chronology - the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events beaux arts, fine arts - the study and creation of visual works of art performing arts - arts or skills that require public performance Occidentalism - the scholarly knowledge of western cultures and languages and people Oriental Studies, Orientalism - the scholarly knowledge of Asian cultures and languages and people philosophy - the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics literary study - the humanistic study of literature library science - the study of the principles and practices of library administration philology, linguistics - the humanistic study of language and literature musicology - the scholarly and scientific study of music Sinology - the study of Chinese history and language and culture stemmatics, 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 eloquence quadrivium - (Middle Ages) a higher division of the curriculum in a medieval university involving arithmetic and music and geometry and astronomy