Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who engages in deep, critical thinking, often in fields like academia, arts, or sciences, valuing knowledge and ideas above all. As an adjective, it describes something related to the intellect, such as high-level reasoning or mental pursuits, and in modern contexts, it can sometimes carry a connotation of elitism or detachment from everyday life.
Did you know?
The term 'intellectual' gained its modern social and political weight during the 1898 Dreyfus Affair in France, when writer Émile Zola and other thinkers rallied to defend wrongly accused officer Alfred Dreyfus, coining the phrase to describe a new class of influential public figures—surprisingly, this event helped transform the word from a mere descriptor into a symbol of moral courage and societal critique.
Verified Sources
Your Usage Frequency
0 / 721