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liberal arts

liberal arts

25 3.7
College or university studies that teach broad knowledge and thinking skills across subjects like literature and history
  • noun
  • /ˈlɪbərəl ɑrts/
translation icon : humanidades
  • A liberal arts education encourages critical thinking and creativity rather than just vocational training.
  • liberal arts college
  • liberal arts education
  • liberal arts curriculum

But I got a great, I think liberal arts education.

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Examples

  • Who benefits from the liberal arts: society or the individual recipient of the liberal arts?

    Academic text (1999)
  • I studied, you know, liberal arts education at Loyola University in New Orleans.

  • But I got a great, I think liberal arts education.

  • You really do need a liberal arts education.

  • I was glad then, in that moment, to have a good liberal arts education.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • We are the home of the liberal arts at Stanford.

  • Now let's assume that like many, you want a liberal arts education.

  • The liberal arts course pays off after all.

  • It's a liberal arts college in Vermont.

  • The only formal education he had was the beginning of a liberal arts degree and his CPA certification.

    Fiction book (1999)

Synonyms

arts
vsliberal arts
4 3.0

Subjects taught at university that focus on knowledge and thinking skills like history and languages

is the specific academic label for that group of general studies
humanistic discipline
vsliberal arts
7.3

A subject like philosophy or literature that teaches general knowledge and thinking skills

covers multiple general subjects across fields rather than a single field
humanities
vsliberal arts
3.5

Subjects that study human culture and ideas, like literature and history

includes those cultural subjects but also other general academic areas

How Broad

liberal arts
25 3.7
specialized
  • US
70 5.4

Surface Forms

liberal arts singular
liberal arts plural

Morphology

liberal + arts

There is a clear compositional clue: 'liberal' can connote broad or non-restrictive and 'arts' refers to academic subjects, so a learner could infer a sense of wide-ranging, non-vocational studies. However, the precise institutional meaning (the specific academic category contrasted with professional or vocational training) is a conventionalized, somewhat specialized sense that many B1 learners would not fully predict without prior exposure, so it is only partly transparent.

Etymology

Liberal arts comes from old Latin where liberal meant 'free' and arts meant skills or studies. One popular story says these were the subjects free people learned to think and speak well, so today liberal arts means broad studies that give 'general knowledge' rather than training for a single 'job'.