Pundit

How to spell pundit

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pundit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pundit mean?

1. nounAn expert who gives opinions and analysis to the public, often in the media.

Pundit in a sentence

• Every political pundit on the panel predicted a close election.

• The broadcaster hired a former coach as a football pundit for match days.

Where does pundit come from?

Language of origin: Sanskrit

The word comes from the Sanskrit pandita, meaning 'learned man' or 'scholar', someone deeply versed in religious law, philosophy, and the classical texts. It passed into Hindi as pandit, a respectful title for a wise teacher or Brahmin scholar, and English picked it up in the early 1600s through British contact with India, where a pundit was an Indian expert consulted on local law and custom. Over the centuries the meaning broadened and lightened: by the twentieth century a pundit was anyone who pronounces authoritative opinions in public, especially in newspapers and on television. The modern, slightly ironic flavour, an expert eager to share verdicts, is now far more common than the original scholarly sense. The single 'd' and the ending '-it' rather than '-ate' are the spelling points to watch, since the word looks as though it might be spelled like a Latin word but is really an Indian import.

How the word is built

• pundit (from Sanskrit pandita: learned, scholarly)