Word of the Day for Friday February 10, 2006 autodidact \aw-toh-DY-dakt\, noun: One who is self-taught. He is our ultimate autodidact, a man who made himself from nothing into a lawyer, a legislator -- a president. --Kevin Baker, "Log Cabin Values," [1]New York Times, April 2, 2000 Consider the autodidact in Sartre's Nausea, who is somewhat unbelievably working his way alphabetically through an entire library. --James Wood, "Human, All Too Inhuman," [2]New Republic, July 24, 2000 Buck's prose is a lot better than you'd expect from a high-school dropout, but he turns out to be a reader and autodidact. --Jonathan Yardley, review of [3]North Star over My Shoulder: A Flying Life, by Bob Buck, [4]Washington Post, April 7, 2002 _________________________________________________________ Autodidact is from Greek autodidaktos, "self-taught," from auto-, "self" + didaktos, "taught," from didaskein, "to teach." References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/ 2. http://www.thenewrepublic.com/ 3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0743219643/ref%3dnosim/lexico 4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=9&q=autodidact