Definition of "savante"

The reputation of a scholar, eccentric habits, grave dress, a severe countenance, and boldness enough to be rude, have raised the Doctor to his little eminence in his circle, where he holds forth, like the philosophers of old in their porticoes, and where weak, would-be savants and savantes come, each with their taper, to borrow light from an offensive half-illumined lamp, shining dimly in neighbouring darkness.

1818, The Hermit in London [pseudonym], “Sketches of Society. The Hermit in London, or Sketches of English Manners. No. XV. A Pedant.”, in The Literary Gazette, and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Politics, Etc., page 668, column 1

There is singular lack of beauty among the savants and savantes, and the squareness and stiffness of their temper might be expressed in their forms. Grace is rare in a race that values it so slightly, and quiet ugliness is stamped on all things new and old.

1866 April, “Modern Geneva”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume XIII, number 76, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], page 427

Not only her scientific background, but a knowledge of the expertise of surgery was child’s play to her, and of the Arts and Reasoning that control our ways of life, she was a Savante.

1968, Geoffrey Parker, The Black Scalpel, London: William Kimber […], page 51

Likenesses of both savants and savantes proliferated. Even though men were infinitely better educated than women, it is impossible to say with certainty that portraits of men set the standard for those of women.

2000, Elise Goodman, “Picturing Enlightened Women”, in The Portraits of Madame de Pompadour: Celebrating the Femme Savante, University of California Press, page 80

In the late fifteenth century, these catalogues, which progressively played into women’s emergence as writers and savantes, began to include contemporary women intellectuals. […] The notion of the savante as a threat to her husband and as arrogant and unduly confident had already surfaced in the late sixteenth century, usually in connection with learned women from the lesser nobility and the upper gentry.

2016, Anne R. Larsen, “Introduction: The Savante in Historical Context”, in Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’: The Educational Vision and Reception of a Savante (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, pages 19 and 21