liberal arts

liberal arts

pl.n.

1. Academic disciplines, such as languages, literature, history, philosophy, mathematics, and science, that provide information of general cultural concern: "The term 'liberal arts' connotes a certain elevation above utilitarian concerns. Yet liberal education is intensely useful" George F. Will.

2. The disciplines comprising the trivium and quadrivium.

---

[Middle English, translation of Medieval Latin arts liberls, the trivium and quadrivium : Latin arts, pl. of Latin ars, art-, subject of study + lberls, pl. of lberlis, proper to free persons.]

Thesaurus

Noun

1.

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, humanities 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