academic vs lowbrow

academic

adj
  • So scholarly as to be unaware of the outside world; lacking in worldliness; inexperienced in practical matters. 

  • Having a love of or aptitude for learning. 

  • Belonging to the school or philosophy of Plato 

  • Belonging to an academy or other higher institution of learning, or a scholarly society or organization. 

  • Conforming to set rules and traditions; conventional; formalistic. 

  • Having little practical use or value, as by being overly detailed and unengaging, or by being theoretical and speculative with no practical importance. 

  • In particular: relating to literary, classical, or artistic studies like the humanities, rather than to technical or vocational studies like engineering or welding. 

  • Subscribing to the architectural standards of Vitruvius. 

noun
  • A senior member of an academy, college, or university; a person who attends an academy; a person engaged in scholarly pursuits; one who is academic in practice. 

  • A member of the Academy; an academician. 

  • A follower of Plato, a Platonist. 

  • Academic studies. 

  • Academic dress; academicals. 

lowbrow

adj
  • Unsophisticated, not intended for an audience of intelligence, education or culture. 

noun
  • Someone or something of low education or culture. 

  • An underground populist visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960s, inspired by comics, punk music, graffiti, etc. 

How often have the words academic and lowbrow occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )