languagist

language +‎ -ist

languagist (plural languagists)

1. A linguist; one who is proficient in languages.
   • 1871, Victoria Rybot, Half a dozen daughters, page 124:

     "Oh dear, dear!" said Miss Crocky, admiringly, " he is such a languagist ; isn't he, Miss Norah? I tell him he's thrown away here. His place is at courts, I'm sure."

   • 1912, Sara White Isaman, Sophisticating Uncle Hiram, page 223:

     'French ain't a hurtin' me,' says I, 'it's my English, I guess their French is mostly like that Pasadena woman's Herman's wife was a tellin' me about. Herself an' all her friends thought she was a fine French languagist, an' when she went into a restaurant in Paris the only way she could make the French waiter understand she wanted bread an' butter was a pintin' to it, an' then pintin' to her mouth.'

   • 2012, Frank O'Neill, Georgia Bound, →ISBN:

     "Now you just get ahold of yourself, lady, and tell me what's going on. In English. I ain't no languagist, you hear?”

2. One who discriminates on the basis of language use.
   • 1966, The Literary Criterion - Volume 7, Issue 3, page 76:

     They can do with these all that the languagists claim to do, and more — save English for our children for, by the way they teach English the lifeblood has escaped, only the skeleton remains.

   • 1982, Z. Anthony Kruszewski, Richard L. Hough, Jacob Ornstein-Galicia, Politics and Society in the Southwest: Ethnicity and Chicano Pluralism:

     Identifying and curbing the activity of such ethnocentric languagist functionaries ought to rank high among Chicano political priorities .