academics
- 1Plural of academic.
A group of leading academics advised the government on climate policy.
The university hired three new academics in its history department.
Note
Most often the plural of the person: the scholars, researchers and teachers of universities, taking a plural verb. The same spelling also carries meanings that exist only in the plural: academic studies, and academic dress, also called academicals. Usually capitalized, Academics can mean followers of Plato, and an archaic use simply meant college students. Context, not form, tells these apart.
- 2The world of higher learning: universities, scholars, teaching, and research taken as a whole.
A career in academics rarely pays as well as the private sector.
She spent her whole life in academics, moving from teaching into research.
Similaracademia
Note
A mass noun that names the whole sphere rather than its people, so it takes no number: a career in academics, never three academics. That is the quickest test against the plural of scholars, which counts individuals. In phrases like a life in academics, academia fits equally well, and swapping it in is a reliable way to check which meaning is intended.
academics is a form of academic
academic, noun: A teacher or researcher at a college or university, or a person engaged in scholarly work. Full entry
- Forms
- academicacademics plural
- Spelling
- academic → academics: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /s/.
Use it in a sentence
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