Library / English Dictionary

INTELLECT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Knowledge and intellectual ability

Example:

he has a keen intellect

Synonyms:

intellect; mind

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("intellect" is a kind of...):

intelligence (the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience)

Attribute:

intellectual (appealing to or using the intellect)

nonintellectual (not intellectual)

Derivation:

intellectual (involving intelligence rather than emotions or instinct)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination

Example:

we are told that man is endowed with reason and capable of distinguishing good from evil

Synonyms:

intellect; reason; understanding

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("intellect" is a kind of...):

faculty; mental faculty; module (one of the inherent cognitive or perceptual powers of the mind)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A person who uses the mind creatively

Synonyms:

intellect; intellectual

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("intellect" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "intellect"):

wonderer (someone who is curious about something)

illusionist; seer; visionary (a person with unusual powers of foresight)

thinker (someone who exercises the mind (usually in an effort to reach a decision))

creative thinker; mind; thinker (an important intellectual)

idealogue; theoretician; theoriser; theorist; theorizer (someone who theorizes (especially in science or art))

synthesiser; synthesist; synthesizer (an intellectual who synthesizes or uses synthetic methods)

subjectivist (a person who subscribes to subjectivism)

specifier (someone who draws up specifications giving details (as for obtaining a patent))

doubter; sceptic; skeptic (someone who habitually doubts accepted beliefs)

bookman; scholar; scholarly person; student (a learned person (especially in the humanities); someone who by long study has gained mastery in one or more disciplines)

mentor; wise man (a wise and trusted guide and advisor)

highbrow (a person of intellectual or erudite tastes)

brain; brainiac; Einstein; genius; mastermind (someone who has exceptional intellectual ability and originality)

expositor; expounder (a person who explains)

egghead (an intellectual; a very studious and academic person)

decipherer; decoder (the kind of intellectual who converts messages from a code to plain text)

clever clogs; clever Dick (an intellectual who is ostentatiously and irritatingly knowledgeable)

bel esprit (a witty or clever person with a fine mind)

aphorist (someone who formulates aphorisms or who repeats aphorisms)

alchemist (one who was versed in the practice of alchemy and who sought an elixir of life and a panacea and an alkahest and the philosopher's stone)

exponent (someone who expounds and interprets or explains)

anomalist (someone who has a special interest in exceptional cases)

Credits

 Context examples: 

A disorder characterized by an impairment in the development of an individual's expressive and receptive language capabilities which is in contrast to his/her nonverbal intellect.

(Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder, NCI Thesaurus)

But in giving an account of the progress of my intellect, I must not omit a circumstance which occurred in the beginning of the month of August of the same year.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

A category of disorders characterized by an impairment in the development of an individual's language capabilities, which is in contrast to his/her non-verbal intellect.

(Language Disorder, NCI Thesaurus)

I left him full of the image of this magnificent intellect babbling like a foolish child.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He is a brilliant fellow when he chooses to work—one of the brightest intellects of the university; but he is wayward, dissipated, and unprincipled.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then, as he is criminal he is selfish; and as his intellect is small and his action is based on selfishness, he confines himself to one purpose.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic; those instructions they give being too refined for the intellects of their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He had travelled in the vast realm of intellect until he could no longer return home.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

It was by no means his daughter's wish that the intellects of Highbury in general should be put under requisition.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

True, Wolf Larsen possessed intellect to an unusual degree, but it was directed solely to the exercise of his savage instincts and made him but the more formidable a savage.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)