School"man` (?), n.; pl. Schoolmen ().

One versed in the niceties of academical disputation or of school divinity.

⇒ The schoolmen were philosophers and divines of the Middle Ages, esp. from the 11th century to the Reformation, who spent much time on points of nice and abstract speculation. They were so called because they taught in the mediaeval universities and schools of divinity.

© Webster 1913.