letters

Noun

 * 1) Literature school subject.
 * Rickert was the first woman (and second individual) to be awarded a Ph.D. in English letters and philology with that academic honor at the University of Chicago.
 * 1) The liberal arts, humanities, learning broad accumulated cultural knowledge.
 * Though architecture in ancient Rome was not generally considered to belong to the artes liberales, Vitruvius easily qualified as a man of letters because of his wide learning.