education

Alternative forms

• (generally jocular) educashun, educamation

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French éducation, from Latin ēducātiō (“a breeding, bringing up, rearing”), from ēducō (“I educate, train”), from ēdūcō (“I lead forth, I take out; I raise up, I erect”). See educate. Morphologically educate +‎ -ion

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌɛd͡ʒ.ʊˈkeɪ.ʃən/, /ˌɛd.jʊˈkeɪ.ʃən/

  • Audio (UK):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌɛd͡ʒ.əˈkeɪ.ʃən/, /ˌɛd͡ʒ.ʊˈkeɪ.ʃən/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• Hyphenation: e‧du‧ca‧tion
• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Noun

education (countable and uncountable, plural educations)

1. (uncountable) The process of imparting knowledge, skill and judgment.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:education

   • 1881, John Younger, “Introductory Chapter”, in Autobiography of John Younger, Shoemaker, St. Boswells‎, Kelso, Scotland: J. & J.H. Rutherfurd, page xii:

     For though education, in the true sense of the word, is necessary to excellence, yet a question still lies open, What is education? Is it certain old rules of thinking which require to be forced on the individual by others, more particularly than those which, by the exercise of his own faculties, he perceives in nature and life within and around him, and seizes, concentrates, abstracts, and digests for himself? Some do this spontaneously with unaccountable facility, such as Shakespeare, Burns, and Ebenezer Elliot; while others never can be tutored into any method of it by old rules, and often, when even stuffed in "the schools" to repletion, feel only besotted from a mind full of old abstruse indigestibles.

   • 2013 July 19, Mark Tran, “Denied an education by war”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 1:

     One particularly damaging, but often ignored, effect of conflict on education is the proliferation of attacks on schools […] as children, teachers or school buildings become the targets of attacks. Parents fear sending their children to school. Girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence.

   Good education is essential for a well-run society.

2. (countable) Facts, skills and ideas that have been learned, especially through formal instruction.
   • 2006 Feb. 17, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, Season 1, Episode 4:

     Nuh-nuh-doin'-duh... Nuh-nuh-doin'-duh... We don't need no education...
     Yes, you do. You've just used a double negative.

   • 2013 June 7, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 19:

     It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.

   He has had a classical education.

   The educations our children receive depend on their economic status.

3. (now rare) Upbringing, rearing.
   • 1861, E. J. Guerin, Mountain Charley, page 23:

     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.

See also

References

• “education”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• education in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “education”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Anagrams

• auctioned, cautioned