comparative philology

noun

1. comparative linguistics.

Word History and Origins

Origin of comparative philology¹

First recorded in 1880–85

Example Sentences

He attended St. Paul’s School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he earned a degree in classics and comparative philology in 1952.

From New York Times

The most prodigious of British autodidacts was Joseph Wright, a Victorian workhouse boy who became professor of comparative philology at Oxford.

From The Guardian

I enjoyed the advance information sheet, where the author's hobbies are listed as "drinking, educational broadcasting, comparative philology and the occult".

From The Guardian

Before the rise of comparative philology it was a popular opinion that Hebrew was the original speech of mankind, from which all others were descended.

From Project Gutenberg

We must ask of every educated man a fair scientific conception of the nature and value of language, of the formation of language, of the alteration of the meaning of roots, of the degeneration of fixed forms of speech to grammatical forms, in brief, of all the main results of modern comparative philology.

From Project Gutenberg