savant

in a sentence

The influential English poet who wrote Paradise Lost was a contemporary of Galileo's and a savant who conspiracy buffs put at the top of their list of Illuminati suspects.†  (source) Dan Brown, Angels & Demons, 2000

Marilyn vos Savant said that you should always change and pick the final door because the chances are 2 in 3 that there will be a car behind that door.†  (source) Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, 2003

Six years?" she asked, thinking he really was some kind of savant.†  (source) Dave Eggers, The Circle, 2013

I didn't know if he was the Messiah, or a savant who channeled texts he'd never read.†  (source) Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart, 2008

Explain how the savants are treated.†  (source) Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Ultimatum, 1990

"What do you think I am," Alessandro asked, "an idiot-savant?†  (source) Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War, 1991

Writers, artists, and savants of America's progressive vanguard have, for years, passed through his living room, pollinating him and his two brothers.†  (source) Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen, 1998

But like Marse Robert, Grant possesses a savant's aptitude for warfare—indeed, he is capable of little else.†  (source) Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, Killing Lincoln, 2011

We knew there's no keeping a born scholar ignorant, and at heart, I think, we didn't really want to, but we were nervous, even frightened, at the statistics on child pedants and academic weisenheimers who grow up into faculty-recreation-room savants.†  (source) J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey, 1957

For at least a minute, perhaps longer, I shuddered and heaved in the throes of a pulmonary spasm, having had in the meantime to endure the humiliation of submitting to Nathan in the role of medical savant: "You've got a regular smoker's cough there, Cracker.†  (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

"Drilling troops and giving classes on the internal combustion engine to all the local savants," said Sam.†  (source) Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light, 1967

The Dawsons smiled their appreciation of listening to a savant.†  (source) Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, 1920

They had lacked what our good savants were later to call proper control.†  (source) Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1927