You can think of a linguist as a "language person" — someone whose working life is spent with language itself. From that one picture the word grows in two directions: the person who can move between languages and put one into another, and the person who takes language apart to see how it works.
linguist 可以想成「以語言為業的人」。lingua 是拉丁文的「語言、舌頭」，-ist 是「做這件事的人」，合起來就是一個整天泡在語言裡的人。從這個畫面往兩邊長：一邊是能在好幾種語言之間來去、把一種話變成另一種話的人；另一邊是把語言拆開來看它怎麼運作的人。這兩邊在中文裡是完全不同的詞，所以讀英文時要先看場景是大學，還是職場。
From the word’s history
Wiktionary gives linguist as Latin lingua ("language") plus the agent ending -ist, so the word literally names a person occupied with language — which is exactly the wide picture both modern uses sit inside.
來源指出 linguist 是拉丁文 lingua（語言）加上表示「做某事的人」的 -ist。字面上就是「語言人」。這個寬鬆的字面意思，正好裝得下今天的兩種用法：用語言的人，和研究語言的人。
Wiktionary, entry "linguist" (kaikki snapshot kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:181675893): "Borrowed from Latin lingua ("language") + -ist."
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