[f. LITERATE + -IST.] One engaged in literary pursuits; a writer, author.
1660. Fisher, Rusticks Alarm, Wks. (1679), 469. He was not ashamed, as our Universities Literatists are at this day, to learn of Women.
1830. ‘Jon Bee,’ Ess. in Dram. Wks. S. Foote, I. p. xxix. Indeed they are never the most elegant literatists who study longest, at college, the jargon of the schools.
1866. F. Harper, Peace thro. Truth, Ser. I. 135. It would … seem as though the greater number of our modern literatists were a sort of inferior caste in English civilization.
