Yesterday, I mentioned the polyhistor. Polyhistor as an
English word is synonymous with, but older than, polymath. The Oxford English Dictionary defines
polyhistor as simply, “A person of great or varied learning; a great scholar,”
and lists the first use back in the 16th century. It derives from
the Latin and Greek word “very learned” or “much learning,” using a different
Greek word for learning, i.e., the word that became the modern “history.”
Its first appearance in English, according to the OED, was
in a letter written by a lecturer at the University of Cambrdge named Gabriel Harvey to a fellow Cantabridgian in which he inserted the Greek
word πολυϊστωρ (polyhistor) into a
sentence otherwise written completely in English. The letter was written
generally in English, but did contain a number of Greek and Latin phrases. The
letter did not appear in print until 1884, when a collection called Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, A.D.1573-1580, was published. So, it is difficult to think that Harvey really intended πολυϊστωρ in a private letter to be
viewed by posterity almost half a millennium later as an English word.
However, the next recorded use of the word is far more
legitimate. Just a couple of years later, in 1588, Gabriel’s brother, the
physician and astrologer John Harvey, used the word (which he spelled polyhistor)
in a book called A discoursive probleme concerning prophesies.
No one will ever know, but one can assume that, at some
point, the brothers talked or shared their correspondence, and then John used
polyhistor as well, but in English.
Samuel Johnson did not put polyhistor in his dictionary (although he did put polymath in there). Polyhistor is now used only rarely as
an English word.
