Intellect definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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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.]

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You might WANT to believe them, but unless these "testimonies" are accompanied with some objective verification, then letting your desire overcome your intellect is a recipe for ignorance. — Progressive U - The new media voice for students
I believe my intellect is a gift from G‑d and I intend to use it in my "quest." — Chabad.org Weekly Magazine [ Chukat-Balak 5769 - July 3, 2009 ]
For the intellect is alive and vigorous, seizing on everything within its scope, shaping it by its individual bent, and, hemmed as it is by walls of sense, naturally rushing into error on every side. — Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886
2: The action of the intellect is accomplished by the intelligible thing being in the intellect, according to the mode of the intellect, so that the intellect is not defiled, but perfected, by them. — Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) From the Complete American Edition
3: Further, if my intellect is distinct from your intellect, my intellect is an individual, and so is yours; for individuals are things which differ in number but agree in one species. — Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) From the Complete American Edition

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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.

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