intellect definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

View all »
Definitions (12)

American Heritage Dictionary (3)

noun The ability to learn and reason; the capacity for knowledge and understanding.
noun The ability to think abstractly or profoundly. See Synonyms at mind.
noun A person of great intellectual ability.

Century Dictionary (5)

The understanding; the sum of all the cognitive faculties except sense, or except sense and imagination. The Latin word intellectus was used to translate the Greek νου%21ς which in the theory of Aristotle is the faculty of the cognition of principles, and that which mainly distinguishes man from the beasts. Hence, the psychologists of the Scotch school use intellect as the synonym of common sense, or the faculty of apprehending a priori principles. The agent or active intellect, according to Aristotle, is the impersonal intellect that has created the world (see phrase below); the passive, patient, or possible intellect is that which belongs to the individual and perishes with him. But with St. Thomas Aquinas the distinction is quite different, the possible intellect being the faculty receptive of the intelligible species emitted by things, while the agent intellect is the power of operative thought. The term pure intellect, said to be used by St. Augustine, and certainly as early as Scotus Erigena, had always denoted the divine intellect, unmixed with matter, until Kant (adopting, as was his frequent practice, the terminology of Löscher) applied it to intellect as separated, in its use or application, from sense. Practical intellect is distinguished from theoretical or speculative, by Aristotle and all other psychologists, as having an end in view. The Platonists at all periods during the middle ages made intellect a special cognitive faculty, higher than reason and lower than intelligence—namely, the faculty of understanding and conceiving of things natural but invisible, as soul and its faculties and operations. (Intellectus more often means the cognitive act, product (concept), or habit than the faculty.) With Kant the intellect is, first, in a general sense, the nonsensuous, self-active faculty of cognition; the faculty of producing representations, of bringing unity into the matter given in sense, of conceiving objects, and of judging; the faculty of concepts, or rules, of discursive cognition; the faculty of a priori synthesis, of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of selfconsciousness; and secondly, in a narrower sense, the faculty of conceiving of intuited objects and of forming concepts and judgments concerning them, but excluding the pure use of the understanding, which in the Kantian system is reason. Intellect, sensitivity, and will are the three heads under which the powers and capacities of the human mind are now generally arranged. In this use of it the term intellect includes all those powers by which we acquire, retain, and extend our knowledge, as perception, memory, imagination, judgment, &c. Fleming, Vocab. of Philos. The intellect is only a subtler and more far-seeing sense, and the sense is a short-sighted and grosser intellect. W. Wallace, Epicureanism, p. 93. I was readily persuaded that I had no idea in my intellect which had not formerly passed through the senses. Descartes, Meditations (tr. by Veitch), vi.
Mind collectively; current or collective intelligence: as, the intellect of the time. The study of barbaric languages and dialects—a study that now absorbs so much of the most adventurous intellect of philology. Amer. Jour. Philol., VII. 255.
plural Wits; senses; mind: as, disordered in his intellects. [Obsolete or vulgar.]

2 more from this dictionary »

View all »
Examples

To my father, the intellect was and must be supreme. — Will
In what way, however, can intellect be the likeness of the universe of beings, and to such a degree that it becomes identified with it so that we can say that the intellect is the universe of beings in the order of ens conceptionale? — Dietrich of Freiberg
Although Krebs in his study of Dietrich concludes that the theory of the intellect was the culmination of his entire philosophical project, William Wallace has shown that Dietrich's qualitative methodology, especially as applied in his optical studies, is a valuable contribution to scientific methodology, a fact that can be appreciated independently of his theory of the intellect. — Dietrich of Freiberg
In this stage, the intellect is able to grasp all intellectual knowledge, and does not need to have recourse to the senses again. — Influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on the Latin West
I still possess my brains and my intellect is as good as ever, but my memory of some of the events I formerly experienced is quite hazy. " — The Tin Woodman of Oz

Add a related word »
Related

Used in the Same Context

intelligence · genius · imagination · courage · wit · faculty · insight · humanity · sensibility · personality · strength · temperament

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English, from Old French intellecte, from Latin intellēctus, perception, from past participle of intellegere, to perceive; see intelligent.

Century Dictionary (1)

= French intellect = Spanish (obsolete) intelecto = Portuguese intellecto = Italian intelletto, from Latin intellectus, a perceiving, perception, understanding, from intellegere, intelligere, perceive, understand: see intelligent.

intellect

View all »
Definitions (12)

American Heritage Dictionary (3)

Century Dictionary (5)

GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

WordNet (3)

Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples

Tags

Stats

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the Same Context

Etymologies (2)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Century Dictionary (1)

Pronunciations
Record your own »

Charts

Recent Lookups

Recent Favorites

Recent Pronunciations

intellect

View all » Definitions (12)

View all » Examples

Tags

Stats

stop updating On Twitter

Photos from

Add a related word » Related

cross reference:

synonyms:

related word:

Etymologies (2)

Pronunciations Record your own »

Charts

Recent Lookups

Recent Favorites

Recent Pronunciations

View all »
Definitions (12)

View all »
Examples

stop updating
On Twitter

Add a related word »
Related

Pronunciations
Record your own »