learned

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of learn.

   By the end of the semester, she had learned enough Spanish to order dinner and ask for directions.

   He learned the trade from his father and never forgot it.

   Note

   Nothing regional limits this form: it is the ordinary past and participle wherever English is spoken (she learned to swim; the lesson has been learned), with learnt a common British alternative. The trap is the old sense of learn as "teach", alive only in nonstandard speech and dialect, so he learned me to fish is not standard; careful writing uses taught. That older meaning survives in the "erudite" adjective, which once meant simply "taught".

2. 2
   well read (person)adjective

   Possessing extensive knowledge gained through study and reading; deeply educated and erudite.

   The conference attracted learned scholars from a dozen countries.

   My grandfather was a learned man who read Latin and Greek for pleasure.

   Similareducated, knowledgeable, scholarly, erudite, brainy

   Oppositeuneducated, ignorant, unlearned

   Note

   Behind the adjective lies an older idea of being taught. Middle English lerned replaced lered, from Old English lǣred, the past participle of lǣran, "to teach", so a learned person was first someone who had been instructed. It compares with more and most (the most learned of them). With the, it names a whole class of people, as in Jill Lepore's "adored by the learned and the lowly".

3. 3
   SayLURNDUS/lɝnd/UK/lɜːnd/

   adjective

   Acquired through experience, practice, or instruction, rather than being present from birth.

   Many animal behaviors are learned rather than instinctive.

   Language is a learned skill that develops over years.

   Similaracquired

   Oppositeunlearned

   Note

   Here the participle of learn has become an adjective for what is acquired rather than inborn: learned behavior set against instinct. Unlearned is its opposite, just as it is for the "erudite" meaning. That makes the word ambiguous, because an unlearned response and an unlearned man are different things. The first is innate, while the second has simply never been taught.

4. 4
   academic (work)adjective

   Marked by extensive scholarship and serious study; characteristic of academic or scholarly work.

   She contributed several learned articles to the journal.

   The debate was conducted in suitably learned tones.

   Similarscholarly, erudite, academic, intellectual

   Oppositeignorant, uneducated

   Note

   Where the "erudite" meaning describes a person, this one describes what scholarship produces: a learned work, a learned article, a learned tone. The Edinburgh Review of 1831 calls a history of the Doric race "this learned work". The adjective transfers the scholar's quality to the page, so it praises the depth of the research rather than the author's character.

5. 5
   in courtadjectiveformal

   A courteous term applied to lawyers or judges, especially as a formal mode of address in court.

   Counsel referred throughout to her learned colleague across the aisle.

   I defer to my learned friend on that point of procedure.

   Note

   Courtroom courtesy turns the adjective into a fixed formula between a possessive and a noun: my learned friend, my learned colleague. On the bench it becomes my learned Brother, as when a judge in Lake v. Plaxton (1854) speaks of "my learned Brother Cresswell". The praise is a formal convention of address, not a claim about anyone's scholarship, which keeps it distinct from the "erudite" meaning.

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