Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use intellectual in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Intellectual means pertaining to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive. Example: “He is an intellectual giant, and I have great respect for him.”

Examples of intellectual by meaning

adjectivePertaining to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive.

  • intellectual powers, activities, etc.
  • Indeed, this discovery of meaning in symbols may be the most astounding intellectual feat that any human being ever performs—and most humans perform it before they are seven years old!1972, Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 25

adjectiveEndowed with intellect; having a keen sense of understanding; having the capacity for higher forms of knowledge or...

  • an intellectual person

adjectiveSuitable for exercising one's intellect; perceived by the intellect.

  • Many of us can, with pleasant ease, suspend a severely intellectual task for a few hours to witness a first-class football match.1916, Joseph McCabe, “Chapter IX”, in The Tyranny of Shams

adjectiveRelating to the understanding; treating of the mind.

  • intellectual philosophy, sometimes called "mental" philosophy

nounAn intelligent, learned person, especially one who discourses about learned matters.

  • Perhaps the last right-wing intellectual was T.1941, George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn

More sentences with intellectual

  • He is an intellectual giant, and I have great respect for him.From the entry respect
  • To his great intellectual powers his published remains bear abundant witness.From the entry remains
  • They didn't realize he had this great deal of intellectual depth.From the entry great deal
  • The top three students had a bet on which one was going to book their intellectual property class.From the entry book
  • She is an intellectual giant, and I respect her greatly.From the entry respect
  • His dissertation is his most important intellectual progeny to date.From the entry progeny
  • "Debate me, coward!" snarled the completely normal intellectual.From the entry debate
  • The philosopher’s work gave intellectual illumination to many.From the entry illumination
  • We like to keep our product and process development in house to help protect our intellectual property rights.From the entry in house
  • Ideas produced by intellectual analysis have only intramental existence.From the entry intramental
  • Important types of property include real property (land), personal property (other physical possessions), and intellectual property (rights over artistic creations, inventions, etc.).From the entry property
  • Similarily, the femosphere possesses intellectual mouthpieces who cloak reactionary perspectives with an intellectual and scientific façade.2025, Cécile Smmons, CTRL HATE DELETE: The New Anti-Feminist Backlash and How We Fight It, unnumbered page. From the entry femosphere
  • I'm one that enjoys intellectual pursuits for my own entertainment, but not all sapios do.2023 December 27, u/booksandpassion, “Question, are the fellow sapiosexuals also intelligent?”, in Reddit, r/sapiosexuals, archived from…. From the entry sapio
  • The Charles Martel Society is a secret society of White nationalists who consider themselves intellectuals.2022 May 20, Elle Reeve, “How White ‘replacement theory’ evolved from elderly racists to teens online to the alleged inspiration for…. From the entry Marxist-Leninist
  • The sheltered world of academia suited Clarence, who for the first time was among his intellectual peers.2022, Hernan Diaz, Trust, Picador (2023), page 141. From the entry fluxions
  • You can't sit and have intellectual, intelligent conversations with some woman in our generation.2020, Sherika Moore, Black Love, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN. From the entry lost in the sauce
  • In this respect, the CYL defended the Little Pinks and attacked public intellectuals who criticized patriotic netizens.2020, Shaohua Guo, The Evolution of the Chinese Internet. From the entry little pink
  • Let intellectuals in power chairs be your type, if it is.2020 September 3, Phoenix Huber, “Are You Being Objectified, or Are You Guarded Around Love?”, in Hello, Love. From the entry fatphile
  • There’s very little intellectual or philosophical diversity in our newsrooms as a result.2019 July 3, Omri Nahmias, Mark Levin, “Mark Levin, Unplugged”, in Mishpacha. From the entry incestuous
  • In meme parlance, you may ask “Why?” but ah, an intellectual asks, “What’s the endgame?”2019 April 25, Heather Schwedel, “The Myth of the Endgame”, in Slate. From the entry endgame
  • In a sense this pretence is a form of 'intellectual MacDonaldism'.2018, H. M. Drucker, Doctrine and Ethos in the Labour Party. From the entry MacDonaldism
  • Their mystification of technology is an intellectual reflection of the commodity fetishism that arises from market relations.2016, Charles Thorpe, Necroculture, page 136. From the entry techno-futurist
  • As an “intellectual,” Zhang Shijie registered with ARCI for resettlement in Taiwan.2015, Meredith Oyen, The Diplomacy of Migration : Transnational Lives and the Making of U.S.-Chinese Relations in the Cold War, Cornell…. From the entry Jilong
  • This paper will discuss the following two issues concerning fanlation: creative rewriting and intellectual property infringement.2015, 廖佳慧(Chia-Hui Liao), “Fanlation in the Digital Age”, in SPECTRUM: NCUE Studies in Language, Literature, Translation, →DOI, pages 39–62. From the entry fanlation
  • The main problem with which the book begins is an intellectual problem: 'reification'.2014 April 17, Christoph Henning, Philosophy after Marx: 100 Years of Misreadings and the Normative Turn in Political Philosophy…. From the entry heartpiece
  • The intellectual realization of his angelicity becomes, consequently, the soul's goal.2013, Maria De Cillis, Free Will and Predestination in Islamic Thought: Theoretical Compromises in .... From the entry angelicity
  • A daily newspaper is a great lake in which intellectual elephants can swim and lambs can paddle.2013, Philip Howard, “What is the correct term?”, in Modern Manners: The Essential Guide to Correct Behaviour and Etiquette, London: The…. From the entry blondin
  • Parisianism is an intellectual grace as well, and not far removed from a moral quality.2013, Rowland Strong, Sensations in Paris, page 75. From the entry Parisianism
  • Etymologies appeal to people with a very wide variety of interests and intellectual backgrounds.2011 [2009], Philip Durkin, “About this book”, in The Oxford Guide to Etymology, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page ix. From the entry etymology
  • Therefore in our account of the development of their intellectual ideas, we also admix pertinent personal details.2011, David Munchin, Is Theology a Science?, page 18. From the entry admix
  • Boyle condemned "the avarice" of those "secretists" who secured profit through the practice of intellectual privacy .2011, Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth, page 175. From the entry secretist
  • Intellectuals and journalists rejected Harding as being as empty as the Sinclair Lewis character.2009, Phillip G. Payne, Dead last: the public memory of Warren G. Harding's scandalous legacy,, Ohio University Press, page 12. From the entry babbitt
  • “I had a very big intellectual commitment for many years to anti-trust law.2009, Edward Carr, "The Last Days of the Polymath", Intelligent Life, Autumn 2009. From the entry monomath
  • He drew deeply there, quelling his intellectual insecurities and nourishing his fanatic ambitions.2009 January 2, Timothy W. Ryback, “First Chapter: Hitler’s Private Library”, in New York Times, retrieved 09 Aug 2015. From the entry Pierian Spring

Meaning of intellectual

  1. adjective Pertaining to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive.
  2. adjective Endowed with intellect; having a keen sense of understanding; having the capacity for higher forms of knowledge or thought; characterized by intelligence or cleverness.
  3. adjective Suitable for exercising one's intellect; perceived by the intellect.

Full definition of intellectual

Questions about intellectual in a sentence

How do you use intellectual in a sentence?
Intellectual is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “He is an intellectual giant, and I have great respect for him.”
What is a short sentence with intellectual?
“an intellectual person”
What does intellectual mean?
Intellectual means pertaining to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: intellectual (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use intellectual in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/intellectual. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.