A sophist (Greek: σοφιστής, romanized: sophistēs) was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught arete, "virtue" or "excellence", predominantly to young statesmen and nobility.

The arts of the sophists were known as sophistry and gained a negative reputation as tools of arbitrary reasoning. "Sophistry" is today used as a pejorative for a superficially sound but intellectually dishonest argument in support of a foregone conclusion.