The Collaborative International Dictionary
Schoolman \School"man`\, n.; pl. Schoolmen. One versed in the niceties of academical disputation or of school divinity.
Note: The schoolmen were philosophers and divines of the Middle Ages, esp. from the 11th century to the Reformation, who spent much time on points of nice and abstract speculation. They were so called because they taught in the medi[ae]val universities and schools of divinity.
Wiktionary
n. (plural of schoolman English)
Wikipedia
- redirect Scholasticism
Usage examples of "schoolmen".
These brilliant men, the so-called Scholasts or Schoolmen, were really very intelligent, but they had obtained their information exclusively from books, and never from actual observation.
The schoolmen of the Middle Ages had not been interested in this mysterious ``electric'' power.
Aristotle's work upon methods of thinking carried the science of Logic to a level at which it remained for fifteen hundred years or more, until the mediaeval schoolmen took up the ancient questions again.
What need had they of him or of Adam, to help them to duel with love and Latin across a room, like a couple of arid schoolmen trying to out-pun each other?