scholarship

Pluralscholarships

Formsscholarships, scholarshiping, scholarshiped

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A grant of financial aid awarded to a student to support their education.

   He applied for a scholarship to help with his college tuition.

   The foundation offers several scholarships to talented music students.

   Similargrant, bursary, stipend, allowance, fellowship

   Note

   Named for what it rewards or where it leads, this is the sense that takes a plural and a modifier freely: choir scholarships, a scholarship to private school. In talk of funding it often appears beside fellowships and traineeships, and bursary, grant and stipend sit close by. The verbs built on the word, attending on one and granting one, both grow from this sense.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The activity, methods, or achievements characteristic of a scholar.

   Decades of patient scholarship lie behind the new edition of the text.

   Her scholarship combines fieldwork with close reading of original documents.

   Similarresearch, study, learning, inquiry

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The character and qualities that distinguish a person as a scholar.

   The professor was known for a scholarship that paired deep knowledge with humility.

   True scholarship reveals itself as much in temperament as in learning.

   Similarerudition, learning, scholarliness

   Oppositeignorance

   Note

   Here the suffix is easiest to hear. The word is simply scholar plus -ship, the ending of friendship and kinship that names a condition or character. In this sense it describes what being a scholar is like rather than what a scholar produces. It praises temperament as much as learning, and only context separates it from the scholar's work and methods.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The entire body of knowledge built up by scholars, together with the world of refined learning.

   Modern medicine rests on centuries of accumulated scholarship.

   The museum is a treasure house of art and scholarship.

   Similarlearning, knowledge, erudition, education

   Oppositeignorance

   Note

   Learning in the mass, and uncountable: no article, no plural. That grammar is the quickest way to tell it apart from the grant. "A scholarship" is money, while "scholarship" on its own is the whole world of learning, something one can mingle with faith or set beside art. Learning and erudition are its nearest equivalents.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To award a scholarship to a student.

   The university will scholarship the top ten applicants this year.

   A private foundation offered to scholarship her through medical school.

   Similarfund, sponsor, support, finance, subsidize

   Note

   The giving side of attending on a scholarship, and transitive: an organization scholarships a student. It turns up most naturally in the passive, as when twenty children were scholarshiped to attend a camp. It also works as a participle before a noun, as in scholarshiped student athletes. Writers face the same choice here between a single and a doubled p.

6. 6
   verbintransitive

   To attend an institution while supported by a scholarship.

   Many athletes scholarship at top universities before turning professional.

   She managed to scholarship at an Ivy League school.

   Note

   A verb made straight from the noun, and still unsettled in spelling: scholarshiped and scholarshipped, scholarshiping and scholarshipping all occur. It is intransitive and usually takes at plus the institution. Joseph Miller writes of a man who, up from the tenements of the Lower East Side, "had scholarshiped at Cornell and Harvard Law."

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