linguist n.

*dnghū-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "tongue."

It forms all or part of: bilingual; language; languet; lingo; lingua franca; Linguaphone; linguiform; linguine; linguist; linguistics; multilingual; sublingual; tongue; trilingual.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Latin lingua "tongue, speech, language" (from Old Latin dingua); Old Irish tenge, Welsh tafod, Lithuanian liežuvis, Old Church Slavonic jezyku "tongue;" Old English tunge "tongue; speech."

word-forming element meaning "one who does or makes," also used to indicate adherence to a certain doctrine or custom, from French -iste and directly from Latin -ista (source also of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian -ista), from Greek agent-noun ending -istes, which is from -is-, ending of the stem of verbs in -izein, + agential suffix -tes.

Variant -ister (as in chorister, barrister) is from Old French -istre, on false analogy of ministre. Variant -ista is from Spanish, popularized in American English 1970s by names of Latin-American revolutionary movements.

"of or pertaining to the study of language," 1824, from German linguistisch (1807); see linguist + -ic. The use of linguistic to mean "of or pertaining to language or languages" (1847) is "hardly justifiable etymologically," according to OED, but "has arisen because lingual suggests irrelevant associations." Related: Linguistical; linguistically.

To the science which may be formed by comparing languages, the term Linguistic has been applied by some German authors. It is not, however, generally adopted, and is liable to some objections. ["Biblical Repository," vol. vii, no. 21, Jan. 1836]