Intelligent
adj, noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A member of the intelligentsia; an intelligent person.
"Now, as all intelligents are doomed to pass probationary states, it is highly probable that many intelligents, long antecedent to the foundation of our world, may have tarnished their innocence; or worse, many may have by disobedience fallen."
- 1 Of high or especially quick cognitive capacity, bright.
"Anstruther laughed good-naturedly. “[…] I shall take out half a dozen intelligent maistries from our Press and get them to give our villagers instruction when they begin work and when they are in the fields.”"
- 2 Well thought-out, well considered.
"The engineer had a very intelligent design proposal for the new car."
- 3 Characterized by thoughtful interaction.
"My girlfriend and I had an intelligent conversation."
- 4 Having at least a similar level of brain power to humankind.
"The hunt for extraterrestrial intelligent life continues."
- 5 Having an environment-sensing automatically-invoked built-in computer capability.
"an intelligent network or keyboard"
- 1 having the capacity for thought and reason especially to a high degree wordnet
- 2 endowed with the capacity to reason wordnet
- 3 exercising or showing good judgment wordnet
- 4 possessing sound knowledge wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Etymology
From Middle French intelligent, from Latin intellegēns (“discerning”), present active participle of intellegō (“understand, comprehend”), itself from inter (“between”) + legō (“choose, pick out, read”).
Partly from Russian интеллиге́нт (intelligént) and partly from the adjective.
Related phrases
More for "intelligent"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.