professorial

From Latin professōrius (“authoritative”) + -al.

• Rhymes: -ɔːɹiəl

professorial (comparative more professorial, superlative most professorial)

1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a professor or professors, or of a professorship or professorships.
   • 1984 December 15, Nancy Walker, “Remembering David Stryker”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 22, page 5:

     David and I were not "intimate" friends. There was always a certain old-worldly formality about our interchanges. There was something professorial and distant about David, something that commanded respect, partially, I think, because he was so respectful himself.

   • 1997, Pamela M. Henson, “‘Through Books to Nature’: Anna Botsford Comstock and the Nature Study Movement”, in Barbara T. Gates, Ann B. Shteir, editors, Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science, University of Wisconsin Press, →ISBN, page 121:

     Adamant that women could not enter the professorial fraternity, Cornell [University] did not appoint any women professors until 1911 and then only in home economics. Comstock regained her professorial title only in 1913, after working for many years as a lecturer (Conable 127, 130).

   • 2012 May 14, Sean Gregory, “NBA Nerd Alert. A studious look is redefining pro style”, in Time, volume 179, number 19, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, page 60:

     Professorial, downright dorktastic African-American NBA [National Basketball Association] stars are defying the expectation that they wear an intimidating hood facade, which is changing how we view black athletes—and how they view themselves.

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:professorial.

• professorially

• professorly