intelligence
Pluralintelligences (some meanings)
- 1The ability to learn, understand, and think clearly, and to apply knowledge and reasoning in practice.
Researchers still debate whether intelligence can be captured by a single test score.
Poor nutrition in early childhood can have lasting effects on a person's intelligence.
UsageOften high intelligence, human intelligence, emotional intelligence.
Similarintellect, cleverness, brainpower, wit
Oppositestupidity
- 2Knowledge about an enemy or hostile activity, often kept secret.
Analysts sifted through intelligence collected from intercepted communications.
The operation relied on accurate intelligence about troop movements.
UsageOften gather intelligence, or intelligence about or on the enemy; one report is a piece of intelligence.
Similarinformation (entry), data
- 3An organization within the government or armed forces whose job is gathering usually secret information on enemies and hostile activity.
He was recruited by naval intelligence during the war.
Foreign intelligence had been monitoring the group for months.
UsageUsually with no article: military intelligence, naval intelligence, work in intelligence.
- 4A being or entity that possesses the capacity to understand, reason, and learn.
Philosophers ask whether an artificial intelligence could ever be truly conscious.
The novel features a vast cosmic intelligence guiding human evolution.
UsageOften an artificial intelligence or an alien intelligence.
Note
Here the capacity becomes a being, and the word takes a plural. Tennyson's "great Intelligences" of 1850 are spirits that "range above our mortal state". In H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds (1898), the "living intelligence" is a Martian. The word suits any mind imagined apart from a human body: angelic, discarnate, alien. That is why it sits so naturally after artificial.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Tennyson's quoted poem, In Memoriam, was first published in 1850. en.wikisource.org
- Tennyson uses the plural 'Intelligences' for heavenly spirits and describes them with the quoted words. en.wikisource.org
- H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, first published in book form in 1898. en.wikipedia.org
- The novel's narrator calls a Martian 'the living intelligence'. en.wikisource.org
Less common meaning
- 5The communication, mutual acquaintance, and familiarity that exists between people.
Similarcorrespondence, communication, contact, rapport
Note
A connection between parties, not information about them. Thomas Fuller in 1650 could say a river "entertained an underground intelligence" with a distant spring. Clarendon in 1702 set "a fair Intelligence" below friendship: cordial terms, nothing warmer. The phrase hold intelligence with, meaning to be in regular or secret communication, keeps the sense alive. Today it is easily misread as the spying sense.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 5 facts
- Thomas Fuller's A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine appeared in 1650. wellcomecollection.org
- Fuller used the quoted phrase for a supposed underground connection between a river and a spring. en.wiktionary.org
- The first volume of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, containing the quotation, was published in 1702. en.wikipedia.org
- Clarendon contrasts 'a fair Intelligence' with the closer relationship of friendship. en.wiktionary.org
- 'Hold intelligence with' is attested in the sense of maintaining communication, including secret communication. en.wikisource.org
Practice
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Origin
Latin intelligentia most likely joins inter- ("between") with legere ("to choose, pick out, read"). It came into Middle English as intelligence by way of Old French. Intelligentsia is a doublet.