as in self-taught
having skills or knowledge acquired through one's own efforts without formal training
an autodidactic painter, John Singleton Copley learned his craft from books purchased from England
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Recent Examples of autodidactic
Over the past decade, she’s cultivated a reputation for a new kind of defiant, autodidactic pop stardom.
—
Holden Seidlitz, New Yorker, 5 Aug. 2025
Holden Seidlitz, New Yorker, 5 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for autodidactic
Adjective
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Deng graduated from elementary school in 1966, but the rest of her education was self-taught.—
René Ostberg,
Encyclopedia Britannica,
23 Apr. 2026
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Other artists are lesser known, such as Eunice Pinney, an early 19th-century folk watercolorist who was entirely self-taught, as well as Bernarda Bryson, a printmaker who depicted farmers in New Deal-era art and only gained recognition later in her life.—
Jacqui Palumbo,
CNN Money,
13 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Odom was divorced from Herbert Odom, a prominent Black South Side dentist and amateur boxer.—
Bob Goldsborough,
Chicago Tribune,
29 Apr. 2026
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Here, research has revealed, for example, how audience and journalistic frames interact and compete in liveblogs, where in a space of potential co-production, journalists still reframe amateur contributions by appending their own frames onto them.—
Daniel Jackson,
Encyclopedia Britannica,
27 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Autodidactic.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/autodidactic. Accessed 2 May. 2026.
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