The following is from Grammarist.com:
A Man of Letters – Idiom, Origin & Meaning
A Man of Letters – Idiom, Origin & Meaning
“What does a man of letters mean? Well, I can tell you it’s not your local mailman carting your actual letter mail around. It’s actually an adjective phrase to describe a bookworm. But it goes far deeper than that, so let’s dive in and see what a man of letters really means, where it came from, and check out a few sentence examples using the phrase.
A man of letters is a phrase as delightfully antiquated as a quill pen. We use it to describe someone who appears to be scholarly or learned—a person who’s deeply studied literature and other related fields.
Picture someone surrounded by books, scribbling away with fervor. Now that I think of it, it sounds a lot like me when I’m deep in plotting and outlining my latest novel!
But in all seriousness, a man of letters isn’t as popular of a term as it used to be, but it’s still relevant today. Think of college professors, Shakespeare or Albert Einstein, as some good examples.
This phrase has been loitering around in our language since the 1800s, a time when people wrote letters by candlelight and tweeting was something only birds did…”

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