anthropologist

IPA/ˌænθrəˈpɒlədʒɪst/
KK[ˌænθrəpˈɑlədʒəst]IPA/ˌænθrəˈpɑːlədʒɪst/

anthropologist — noun

  • anthropologistsingular
  • anthropologistsplural

1. a scientist whose job is to research how human groups live, what they believe, a

1.nounB2
Definition

a scientist whose job is to research how human groups live, what they believe, and how their families, languages, and cultures change over time.

Example

Dr. Hiro is an anthropologist who spent two years living with farmers in rural Peru.

be + an anthropologist + who-clause for describing a person's role

The museum hired three anthropologists to record stories told by Inuit elders.

plural use after a number

Common collocations
  • cultural anthropologist
  • social anthropologist
  • medical anthropologist
  • forensic anthropologist
  • physical anthropologist
Synonyms
  • ethnographer

    narrower — focuses specifically on writing detailed accounts of one community's daily life

  • ethnologist

    compares cultures across societies; older, more academic term

  • social scientist

    much broader; covers economists, sociologists, and political scientists too

Grammar Patterns

a/an + anthropologist

anthropologist + at/from + institution

Usage Note

Subject is usually a named person or institution. Often paired with a prepositional phrase naming the field site, university, or specialism (e.g. 'an anthropologist at Yale', 'a medical anthropologist').

Common Mistakes

She is anthropologist.
She is an anthropologist.
countable noun, needs 'a/an' or a determiner.
He studies anthropologist at university.
He studies anthropology at university.
the field is 'anthropology'; the person is 'anthropologist'.

Word family

  • anthropology
    nounB2
  • anthropological
    adjectiveC1
  • anthropologically
    adverbC1

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

An anthropologist studies humans broadly — their cultures, biology, languages, and history — across many societies. An ethnographer is a kind of anthropologist who focuses on living with one specific community and writing a detailed account of daily life there. An ethnologist works at a higher level, comparing customs and beliefs across several cultures, and the term feels a bit more old-fashioned. A sociologist also studies people in groups but usually looks at modern, large-scale societies through surveys and statistics rather than fieldwork in villages. An archaeologist studies past human life through physical objects like pottery, bones, and ruins. So if Wen lives in a fishing village for a year and writes about its wedding customs, call her an ethnographer; if she compares wedding customs across five countries, call her an ethnologist; if she digs up an ancient temple, she is an archaeologist.

anthropologist ↗ethnographer ↗ethnologist ↗sociologistarchaeologist ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

  • anthropologist's fieldwork
  • anthropologist's notebook
  • team of anthropologists

Phrases

  • become an anthropologist
  • work as an anthropologist
  • trained as an anthropologist

Prepositions

  • anthropologist at
  • anthropologist from
  • anthropologist of

Etymology

GreekLatinEnglish

Built from the Greek roots 'anthropos' meaning 'human being' and 'logia' meaning 'study of', joined by the suffix '-ist' for a person who does something. The full word entered English in the late 1500s but only took on its modern scientific meaning in the 1800s, when researchers began studying human cultures in a systematic way.