JOHANN CHRISTIAN GOTTLIEB ERNESTI (1756-1802), German classical scholar, was born at Arnstadt, Thuringia, and studied under his uncle, J. A. Ernesti, at the university of Leipzig. On the 5th of June, 1782, he was made supplementary professor of philosophy at his own university; and on the death of his cousin August Wilhelm in 1801 he was for five months professor of rhetoric. He died on the 5th of June of the same year.
His principal works are: - Editions of Aesop's Fabulae (1781); of the Glossae sacrae of Hesychius (1785) and Suidas and Phavorinus (1786); and of Silius Italicus Punica (1791-1792); Lexicon Technologiae Graecorum rhetoricae (1795); Lexicon technologiae Latinorum rhetoricae (1797), and Cicero's Geist and Kunst (1799-1802).