savant

今週はReader's Digest 6月号を読みます。まず脳についての記事The Amazing Brainに出てきた単語を採り上げます。
Serrell is an acquired savant - someone for whom a brain injury has unlocked astonishing mental powers, ones that scientists believe lie latent within all of us.
"savant" の説明が文中にありますが、辞書あるいはWikipediaに記述があるか調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A learned person, especially a distinguished scientist.: They're obsessed with systems, and they're good at systemizing, even when they don't happen to be mathematics profssors or savants.
・Vocabulary.com: You know that girl in your school with a GPA over 100? She is a savant in the making. A savant is someone over-the-top smart, a scholar. It might take a savant only five minutes to do an entire math test.
Savant is the French word for "learned" and it goes back to the Latin word "to be wise", sapere. There are savants who are wise and learned, and then there are idiot savants, who are brilliant in very specific areas, but not in others, like an idiot savant who knows absolutely everything about the American Civil War but has no ability with learning a foreign language.
どの辞書も大体上のような説明で記事で使われているような特殊な状況による知能の持ち主ではありません。しかし、Wikipediaに "Savant syndrome" の項で次の説明がありました。
Savant syndrome is a condition in which a person with a mental disability, such as an autism spectrum disorder, demonstrates profound and prodigious capacities or abilities far in excess of what would be considered normal. People with savant syndrome may have neurodevelopmental disorders, notably autism spectrum disorders, or brain injuries. The most dramatic examples of savant syndrome occur in individuals who score very low on IQ tests, while demonstrating exceptional skills or brilliance in specific areas, such as rapid calculation, art, memory, or musical ability. In spite of the name "syndrome", it is not recognized as a mental disorder nor as part of mental disorder in medical manuals such as the ICD-10 or the DSM-V.
記事での "savant" はこの "savant syndrome" による "savant" の様です。