intellectual

comparative more intellectual · superlative most intellectual · alternative intellectuall

1. Pertaining to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive.

   intellectual powers, activities, etc.

   2 more examples

   1920, Harold Monro, Preface to The year's at the spring; an anthology of recent poetry Pleasure is various, but it cannot exist where the emotions or the imagination have not been powerfully stirred. Whether it be called sensual or intellectual, pleasure cannot be willed

   Indeed, this discovery of meaning in symbols may be the most astounding intellectual feat that any human being ever performs—and most humans perform it before they are seven years old!

   1972, Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 25

2. Endowed with intellect; having a keen sense of understanding; having the capacity for higher forms of knowledge or thought; characterized by intelligence or cleverness

   an intellectual person

   1 more example

   The Fenimore Cooper Indian is no doubt a brave and highly intellectual person, educated abroad, refined and cultivated by foreign travel, graceful in the grub dance or scalp walk-around, yet tender-hearted as a girl, walking by night fifty-seven miles in a single evening to warn his white friends of danger.

   1894, Edgar Wilson Nye, “Chapter 30”, in Nye's History of the USA

3. Suitable for exercising one's intellect; perceived by the intellect

   intellectual employments

   1 more example

   A good deal of nonsense is written about sport and entertainment. Many of us can, with pleasant ease, suspend a severely intellectual task for a few hours to witness a first-class football match.

   1916, Joseph McCabe, “Chapter IX”, in The Tyranny of Shams

4. Relating to the understanding; treating of the mind.

   intellectual philosophy, sometimes called "mental" philosophy

5. archaicpoeticSpiritual.

   I deem not profitless those fleeting moods / Of shadowy exultation; not for this, / That they are kindred to our purer mind / And intellectual life […]

   1805, William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book II, lines 331-334 (eds. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, & Stephen Gill, published by W. W. Norton & Company, 1979)

plural intellectuals · alternative intellectuall

1. An intelligent, learned person, especially one who discourses about learned matters.

   ‘You know I hate intellectuals.’ ‘You mean you hate people who are cleverer than you are.’ ‘Yes. I suppose that’s why I like you so much, Tom.’

   1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section I, page 14

   1 more example

   It should be noted that there is now no intelligentsia that is not in some sense "Left". Perhaps the last right-wing intellectual was T. E. Lawrence. Since about 1930 everyone describable as an “intellectual” has lived in a state of chronic discontent with the existing order.

   1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn

   Synonyms: highbrow, academic, scholar

2. archaicThe intellect or understanding; mental powers or faculties.

   […] although their intellectuals had not failed in the theory of truth, yet did the inservient and brutall faculties control the suggestion of reason […]

   1646, Thomas Browne, chapter 1, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], London: […] T[homas] H[arper] for Edward Dod, […], →OCLC, 1st book, page 2