intellectual
Noun pluralintellectuals
Pluralintellectuals
- 1Relating to or performed by the mind; involving thought rather than feeling or physical action.
The debate club gave students an outlet for intellectual challenge.
She approached the problem with intellectual rigor rather than emotion.
Similarmental, cerebral, cognitive, academic
Note
The word came into English through Old French intellectuel, from Latin intellectualis, and this is its everyday sense. Its natural opposite is not "stupid" but "sensual" or "emotional": Harold Monro, writing about poetry in 1920, sets pleasure that is "sensual or intellectual" side by side. Use it for what the mind does, as in intellectual powers or intellectual activity, and save the "clever" meaning for describing people.
- 2A learned, intelligent person, especially one who studies and discusses serious or scholarly subjects.
The conference drew intellectuals from universities across the country.
As a public intellectual, she wrote essays that shaped national debate.
Similarscholar, academic, highbrow
Oppositelowbrow, philistine
Note
As a noun, the word often carries an attitude. Orwell in The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) sets "intellectual" in inverted commas as the label for a whole class. In Stephen Fry's The Liar (1991) a character says plainly, "I hate intellectuals." Academic and scholar name what someone does. Intellectual, like highbrow, names a type of person, and it can be praise or a sneer depending on who says it.
- 3Having strong mental powers; intelligent, clever, and capable of deep understanding or higher thought.
He was a deeply intellectual man who grasped new ideas instantly.
Truly intellectual thinkers question even their own assumptions.
Similarintelligent, cerebral, scholarly, learned, erudite
Oppositeunintelligent, lowbrow, ignorant
- 4
- 5Concerned with the understanding or the workings of the mind.
The philosopher's work focused on intellectual processes like memory and reason.
Early psychology began as an intellectual study of perception and thought.
Note
Here the word names a field of study rather than a quality. Intellectual philosophy was the study of the understanding, and it was sometimes called "mental" philosophy. In that pairing, intellectual means "about the mind," not "demanding" or "clever." An intellectual philosophy is one that studies thinking, not one that is hard to follow.
Less common meanings
- 6The intellect or understanding; the mind's powers or faculties.
Note
An archaic noun for the mind's faculties themselves, now displaced by intellect. Thomas Browne, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), writes that "their intellectuals had not failed," and sets them against the "brutall faculties." The plural is the trap: today intellectuals means learned people. In older prose, ask whether the word names minds or the people who have them.
- 7Spiritual; relating to the soul or higher, non-physical realm rather than the body.
The hymn celebrated an intellectual radiance untouched by earthly things.
Her verse spoke of an intellectual love that lifts the spirit upward.
Note
A poet's sense, now archaic, in which the mind shades into the soul. When Wordsworth writes in The Prelude (1805) of "our purer mind / And intellectual life," he means a spiritual life, not a bookish one. A modern reader will hear the ordinary "mental" sense first, so outside poetry, or discussion of older verse, choose spiritual instead.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Old French intellectuel, which in turn comes from the Latin word intellectualis.