linguistics
n.the scientific study of how languages work. It looks at how people make sounds, how they build sentences, and how the meaning of words changes over time.
n.the scientific study of language and its structure, including the analysis of morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics. Despite the '-s' ending, it takes a singular verb.
“She decided to study linguistics to understand how children learn to speak.”
“A degree in linguistics provides a deep understanding of the cognitive processes involved in human communication.”
“While many people assume linguistics is simply the study of multiple languages, it is actually a rigorous discipline focused on the underlying rules that govern all human speech.”
Takes a singular verb (e.g., 'Linguistics is...') despite the '-s' ending.
Names of academic subjects ending in -ics are treated as singular nouns.
“This method may therefore be readily accessible to researchers in fields such as psychology and linguistics who do not specialize in machine learning.”
Etymology tree Latin lingua English -ist English linguist English -ics English linguistics From linguist + -ics, akin to linguistic and Latin linguisticus, coined by English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell in 1847 from German Linguistik.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.