as in essays
a long piece of writing about a particular subject that is done to earn an advanced degree at a university
He wrote his dissertation on an obscure 16th-century poet.
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Recent Examples of dissertations
Then there’s the rapid advance of image models, and models that can write poetry, and fiction, and dissertations, and ads, and policy papers.
—
John Werner, Forbes.com, 5 Jan. 2026
People would devote entire dissertations to developing techniques for distinguishing handwritten digits or for recognizing faces in images; then a deep-learning algorithm would digest the underlying data, discover the subtleties of the problem, and make those projects seem obsolete.
—James Somers, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
John Werner, Forbes.com, 5 Jan. 2026
People would devote entire dissertations to developing techniques for distinguishing handwritten digits or for recognizing faces in images; then a deep-learning algorithm would digest the underlying data, discover the subtleties of the problem, and make those projects seem obsolete.
—James Somers, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for dissertations
Noun
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In these essays, our columnists follow their curiosity, and explore important but not necessarily answerable scientific questions.—
Quanta Magazine,
Quanta Magazine,
13 Feb. 2026
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His passion for the medium and its great artists illuminates this volume, which is shaped around a list of 100 Black films contextualized in a series of critical short essays by Clark, providing a lively and robust history of global Black filmmaking.—
Zac Ntim,
Deadline,
11 Feb. 2026
Noun
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Judge Biery’s footnote directing readers to Blackstone’s commentaries and Magna Carta may be intended to give a remedial lesson to members of the administration.—
A.O. Scott,
New York Times,
3 Feb. 2026
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The commentaries between the president and the governor, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, also came on the same day Newsom was denied entry to the USA House, despite being scheduled to speak at a fireside chat with Fortune Media.—
Terry Collins,
USA Today,
22 Jan. 2026
Noun
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The text consists of 10 treatises on architecture, engineering and urban planning, and is the oldest surviving work written on the subject.—
Andrea Margolis,
FOXNews.com,
28 Jan. 2026
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The collection, now over 40,000 volumes, includes Greek and Arabic manuscripts, early cartographic works and rare scientific treatises gathered from across the Iberian world.—
Navya Verma,
Condé Nast Traveler,
2 Jan. 2026
Noun
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Enhance your media literacy by learning the differences between news and opinion and, further, how to differentiate between advertising, news articles, letters, columns and editorials.—
Brenda Looper,
Arkansas Online,
11 Feb. 2026
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Lai, who pleaded not guilty, was convicted in December of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles.—
Kanis Leung,
Los Angeles Times,
10 Feb. 2026
Noun
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The discipline has built a vast array of empirical theses deep inside this single ideology—liberalism—and, in doing so, has naturalized it.—
Jason Blakely,
Harpers Magazine,
30 Dec. 2025
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Kirk has two main theses in his book, and expresses each in a very different tone.—
Judith Shulevitz,
The Atlantic,
22 Dec. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Dissertations.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dissertations. Accessed 15 Feb. 2026.
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