learned
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.