gaonn.
/ˈɡɑːəʊn/ Used as an honorific for the heads of Jewish academies in Babylonia, Palestine, Syria, and Egypt from the 6th to the 11th centuries; later in Spain, Italy and in the eighteenth century in Vilna applied to any person outstandingly gifted in language and art; (after 19th- and 20th-century Yiddish usage) a genius, prodigy.
ΘΚΠ
society > faith > church government > member of the clergy > clerical superior > various non-Christian superiors > [noun] > Jewish
high priest1526
gaon1780
the mind > mental capacity > understanding > intelligence, cleverness > high intelligence, genius > [noun] > person of superior intellect, genius
wit1508
angel1655
eagle wit1661
genie1676
prodigya1684
genio1684
mastermind1692
genius1711
athlete1759
the brain(s)1844
master-brain1857
gaon1892
supermind1903
poindexter1981
dexter1985
1780 Encycl. Brit. V. 3178/2 Gaons, a certain order of Jewish doctors, who appeared in the East, after the closing of the talmud.
1892 I. Zangwill Children of Ghetto (1893) i. vii. 71 The light of his generation, the great Gaon..Rav Shemuel.
1892 I. Zangwill Children of Ghetto (1893) i. vii. 72 It was like the Wilna Gaon come again.
1935 S. Lewis It can't happen Here xviii. 204 You Geōnim never lap up anything but snow-cooled nectar.
1941 G. G. Scholem Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism ix. 341 The ‘Gaon’ Elijah of Vilna, the outstanding leader of Lithuanian Jewry.
1964 H. Kemelman Friday Rabbi slept Late (1965) i. 23 ‘What do you think of the Rabbi now?’..‘A gaon,..a regular gaon.’
1968 New Scientist 23 May 385/3 The responsa written by Jewish legal experts in Medieval Spain since the period of the gaonim (spiritual heads of communities).
Derivatives
gaˈonic adj.
ΚΠ
1934 Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang. Gaonic.
1941 G. G. Scholem Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism ix. 352 Assuming that these passages are subsequent Gaonic interpolations.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1972; most recently modified version published online June 2018).
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n.1780