Definition of "erudite"

At all events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind.

1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter XII, in The Scarlet Letter

Elmer Moffatt had been magnificent, rolling out his alternating effects of humour and pathos, stirring his audience by moving references to the Blue and the Gray, convulsing them by a new version of Washington and the Cherry Tree […] , dazzling them by his erudite allusions and apt quotations.

1913, Edith Wharton, “Chapter 43”, in The Custom of the Country

THE CONCISE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF WORLD RAILWAY LOCOMOTIVES. Edited by P. Ransome-Wallis. Hutchinson. 50s. [...] The most erudite locomotive engineer could not fail to excavate new knowledge from this remarkably comprehensive volume, [...]

1960 January, “New reading on railways”, in Trains Illustrated, page 26

Perhaps his erudite mind does not quite yet grasp how to transform his beloved scholarly explorations into effective papal politics.

2006 September 17, Jeff Israely, “Preaching Controversy”, in Time‎, archived from the original on 19 September 2010

Cruz was obviously analogizing Bernie Sanders to the Bolsheviks and Hillary Clinton to the Mensheviks. The oleaginous Texan is an erudite slyboots, but his history is off-kilter.

2015 November 1, Hendrik Hertzberg, “That G.O.P. Debate: Two Footnotes”, in The New Yorker‎