cognoscente

cognoscente

English

WOTD – 27 November 2008

Etymology

From obsolete Italian cognoscente (modern Italian conoscente) from Latin cognōscere (“to know”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kɒnjəˈʃɛnteɪ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌkɑɡ.nəˈʃɛn.ti/, /ˌkɑn.jəˈʃɛn.ti/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Homophone: cognoscenti

Noun

cognoscente (plural cognoscenti)

1. (often in the plural) Someone possessing superior or specialized knowledge in a particular field.

   Synonyms: connoisseur, maven

   • 1998, Marc J. Seifer, chapter 42, in Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius, →ISBN, page 397:

     At night, as creative author, the cognoscente sketched out the first draft of his expanded autobiography.

   • 2011, Patrick Spedding; James Lambert, “Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and the Myth of Metonymy”, in Studies in Philology, volume 108, number 1, page 117:

     In the latter case — if only a handful of people knew the term — it would have been pretty pointless for Cleland to name his protagonist Fanny when practically nobody was likely to get the joke, not even cognoscenti such as Grose.

   • 2019 May 11, Farah Nayeri, “Venice Biennale’s Top Prize Goes to Lithuania”, in The New York Times‎, ISSN 0362-4331:

     The Biennale can be daunting for those who are not art cognoscenti or participants in the art world.

   • 2020 December 30, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Cut HS2 eastern leg, says NIC?”, in Rail, page 3:

     And by the way, yes I AM inventing the HS2E acronym, because few outside the HS2 cognoscenti understand all that 'Phase' stuff!

Related terms

• cognition
• cognizance

Translations

someone possessing specialized knowledge in a particular field

Chinese: Mandarin: 行家 (zh) (hángjiā) Czech: expert (cs) m, znalec (cs) m Dutch: kenner (nl), expert (nl) Finnish: asiantuntija (fi) French: connaisseur (fr) m, expert (fr) m Persian: اهل فن‎ (fa) (ahl-e fan) Russian: знато́к (ru) m (znatók) (superior), экспе́рт (ru) m or f (ekspért) (specialized) Spanish: experto (es) Swedish: expert (sv) c, kännare (sv) c, förståsigpåare (sv) c

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Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /koɲ.ɲoʃˈʃɛn.te/
• Rhymes: -ɛnte
• Hyphenation: co‧gno‧scèn‧te

Participle

cognoscente (plural cognoscenti)

1. (obsolete) present participle of cognoscere

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Spanish

Adjective

cognoscente (plural cognoscentes)

1. cognitive

Further reading

• “cognoscente”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014