Word.ws English Dictionary

public intellectual

public intellectual noun: a well-known, intelligent, learned person whose written works and other social and cultural contributions are recognized not only by academic audiences and readers, but also by many members of society in general.

Noun

public intellectual (plural public intellectuals)

  1. (idiomatic) A well-known, intelligent, learned person whose written works and other social and cultural contributions are recognized not only by academic audiences and readers, but also by many members of society in general.
    • "I have always taken the role of public intellectual very, very seriously," said Mark Crispin Miller, 51, a professor of media ecology at New York University. "A public intellectual is someone who engages in intellectual pursuits, airs intellectual concerns in a way the broad, literate public can...2001 June 13, Chris Hedges, “Public Lives: Watching Bush's Language, and Television”, in New York Times, retrieved 24 Oct 2012
    • As a sociologist, Raper concerned himself with everything from the legal impediments African Americans faced to the way blacks and whites arranged themselves around the hot stove in a small-town general store. He was among the first generation of southern public intellectuals, an engaged academic...2005, Louis Mazzari, "New Introduction" to Preface To Peasantry (1936) by Arthur Franklin Raper, p. xvii (Google preview)

Examples of public intellectual in a sentence

  • "I have always taken the role of public intellectual very, very seriously," said Mark Crispin Miller, 51, a professor of media ecology at New York University.2001 June 13, Chris Hedges, “Public Lives: Watching Bush's Language, and Television”, in New York Times, retrieved 24 Oct 2012:
  • He was among the first generation of southern public intellectuals, an engaged academic in a region where anti-intellectualism had a long and healthy tradition.2005, Louis Mazzari, "New Introduction" to Preface To Peasantry (1936) by Arthur Franklin Raper, p. xvii (Google preview)

Forms of public intellectual

pluralpublic intellectuals

Questions about public intellectual

What does public intellectual mean?
Public intellectual means a well-known, intelligent, learned person whose written works and other social and cultural contributions are recognized not only by academic audiences and readers, but also by many members of society in general.
How do you use public intellectual in a sentence?
"I have always taken the role of public intellectual very, very seriously," said Mark Crispin Miller, 51, a professor of media ecology at New York University.
What part of speech is public intellectual?
Public intellectual is a noun.
What is the plural of public intellectual?
The plural of public intellectual is public intellectuals.

Words near public intellectual in the dictionary

  1. public housing
  2. public image
  3. public images
  4. public indecency
  5. public information officer
  6. public intellectual
  7. public intellectuals
  8. public interest
  9. public international law
  10. public intoxication
  11. public Ivies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: public intellectual (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-public intellectual.ogg.

Cite this entry: “public intellectual.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/public_intellectual. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.