learned
One word, multiple lives.
Even the learned learned something new today.
The sentence asserts that even highly knowledgeable scholars discovered something new today.
Meanings
having or showing profound knowledge gained through scholarly study
- A learned professor of medieval history.
- His learned commentary impressed the panel.
the past tense of 'learn' — acquired knowledge or skill
- She learned French in college.
- I learned to swim at age six.
Word origin
From Old English leornod, the past participle of leornian ('to acquire knowledge'), from Proto-Germanic *liznōną. The two-syllable adjective 'learnèd' /ˈlɜːrnɪd/ preserves an archaic pronunciation of the -ed ending; the one-syllable verb form /lɜːrnd/ went through the standard Middle English vowel-loss in -ed endings. Both senses come from the same Old English source.
Fun fact
'Learnèd' /ˈlɜːrnɪd/ is part of the same fossilized class as 'aged', 'wretched', 'wicked', 'naked', 'crooked', 'dogged', and 'ragged' — old participial adjectives that preserved the syllabic -ed ending while almost all other -ed words dropped it. Reading academic prose, you'll see 'learnèd' used as an adjective and 'learned' as a past tense almost interchangeably in spelling.