Definition of "liberal arts" [liberal arts]

• Academic disciplines, such as languages, literature, history, philosophy, mathematics, and science, that provide information of general cultural concern: "The term 'liberal arts' connotes a certain elevation above utilitarian concerns. Yet liberal education is intensely useful” ( George F. Will). (noun-plural)
• The disciplines comprising the trivium and quadrivium. (noun-plural)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "- Min Liu, a 21-year-old liberal arts student at the New School in New York City, got a"
• "My hero worship of Garland Waggoner was boundless and it made me want to follow him to Eureka, a liberal arts college owned by the Disciples of Christ that was located about 110 miles southeast of Dixon."
• "The liberal arts were divided into two parts: the quadrivium, the sciences, which concentrated on physical reality and included geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music; and the trivium, which included grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic."