education
Pluraleducations (some meanings)
- 1The process of giving people knowledge, practical skills, and sound judgment.
The school treats education as a partnership between teachers, parents, and students.
The country invests heavily in the education of its youngest citizens.
UsageMeans schooling and learning, not good manners: for how a child was raised, say upbringing.
Similarteaching, schooling, instruction, training, tuition
- 2The field of teaching and learning, viewed as a career, as an academic discipline, or as a public system of schools, colleges and universities.
She earned a master's degree in education before becoming a principal.
Years of cuts to public education have left many rural districts short of teachers.
UsageUsually in education for the field: work in education, a degree in education.
Similarteaching
- 3The facts, skills, and ideas a person has gained, especially through formal instruction.
His wide education showed whenever the conversation turned to history, art, or science.
An education in the classics shaped the way he wrote for the rest of his life.
UsageTakes a or an: a good education, an education in the classics. The plural educations is possible but rare.
Less common meanings
- 4An experience from which a person learns a great deal, frequently about things they find unfamiliar or unexpected.
A summer on a fishing boat in Alaska was an education in hard work and cold mornings.
For a kid from the suburbs, that first week on the farm was quite an education.
UsageUsually quite an education or a real education, often wry; an education in hard work names the lesson.
Similareye-opener, lesson, revelation
- 5The bringing up and rearing of a child, especially in manners and character.
A young lady's education, in that age, concerned deportment far more than letters.
I found them [my children] all I could wish and progressing rapidly under the truly maternal care of the kind Sisters who cared for their education.
1861, E. J. Guerin, Mountain CharleyNote
This sense sits closest to the Latin. Ēducātiō meant "a breeding, bringing up, rearing", from ēducō, "I bring up, train", related to ēdūcō, "I lead forth". It covers the whole care of a child, not only lessons, as when E. J. Guerin's Mountain Charley (1861) praises the Sisters who "cared for their education." It now reads as archaic. In modern prose, upbringing says the same thing without being mistaken for schooling.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Middle French éducation, from Latin ēducātiō meaning "a breeding, bringing up, rearing," from ēducō ("I educate, train"), related to ēdūcō ("I lead forth, raise up"). In form, it can be analyzed as educate plus the suffix -ion.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- English education was borrowed from Middle French éducation, from Latin ēducātiō. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin ēducātiō meant breeding, bringing up or rearing. en.wiktionary.org
- Ēducātiō derives from ēducō, meaning to educate or train. en.wiktionary.org
- Ēducō is related to ēdūcō, meaning to lead forth or raise up. en.wiktionary.org
- Education was borrowed from French. Educate + -ion describes its morphological analysis, not its historical formation in English. en.wiktionary.org