intellectualoid

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noun

One with intellectual pretensions

First used 1970sScrabble 18

Meanings

nounintellectualoid (plural intellectualoids)

plural intellectualoids

  1. USderogatoryOne with intellectual pretensionsFirst known use 1970s

    Barack Obama owes his position to his membership in a class that is destroying America: the intellectualoids -- shallow people able to fool others into believing they possess superior intellects.

    2015 June 17, L. E. Ikenga, “Obama and the Black Intellectualoids”, in American Thinker
    2 more examples

    In the aftermath of this attack, it was reported that Bedell was a pot-smoking intellectualoid from California who left word on the Internet that according to his findings, a "coup regime" took over Washington at the time of President John F. Kennedy's assassination and has governed the country "up to the present day."

    2010 March 12, R. Emmett Tyrrell, “The angry left joins talk radio”, in The Washington Examiner

    I do not think the press is "an enemy of the people," but, as Dwight Eisenhower said in 1964, its ranks are filled with "sensation-seeking columnists and commentators" whose writings mark them as little more than intellectualoids.

    2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 37

Origin

Coined by columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell writing in The American Spectator from intellectual + -oid.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

intellectualoid. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/intellectualoid

MLA

“intellectualoid.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/intellectualoid. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “intellectualoid,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/intellectualoid.

Source: intellectualoid on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.