cognoscente

noun

1. (in-plural, often)Someone possessing superior or specialized knowledge in a particular field.

   “He is the painter who has been held to combine the most complete grace of form with sublimity of expression. Such at least I have gathered to be the opinion of cognoscenti.”

   “He was a brilliant cosmopolite and a cognoscente of high rank; but, after all, he was of the same race and blood and instinct as this people.”

   “At night, as creative author, the cognoscente sketched out the first draft of his expanded autobiography.”

   “This was before Wozniak—known among the cognoscenti as Woz—almost woke up the Pope by calling the Vatican on his famed illegal "blue box," before he invented the Apple II and helped launch the personal computer industry, and before he gave up his brilliant engineering career and became a public school teacher.”

   “In the latter case — if only a handful of people knew the term — it would have been pretty pointless for Cleland to name his protagonist Fanny when practically nobody was likely to get the joke, not even cognoscenti such as Grose.”