intelligentsia
[in-tel-i-jent-see-uh, -gent-]
- intellectuals considered as a group or class, especially as a cultural, social, or political elite.
Origin of intelligentsia
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for intelligentsia
Contemporary Examples
She certainly knows how to court the intelligentsia; they rhapsodize when anyone says, “On the one hand, but on the other hand.”
In the morning, join the intelligentsia at Cafe Pamplona, a European-style coffeehouse, also by Harvard Square.
The urban gentry and intelligentsia, though, disdained this voluntary migration.
The liberals and the intelligentsia in Pakistan have been impressive through these difficult days.
Lev, the son of a Moscow intelligentsia family, was luckier than the fictional Ivan Denisovich.
Historical Examples
In this way he saved a great many of the Dalmatian intelligentsia.
The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1Henry Baerlein
The intelligentsia rushed to the rescue with highbrow hue and cry.
BizarreLawton Mackall
But the Balkan has no intelligentsia in the Russian or even American sense.
After the RainSam Vaknin
But the intelligentsia, by 1885, had been pretty well convinced.
The AntichristF. W. Nietzsche
We both belong to what the Russians call the Intelligentsia.
The Research MagnificentH. G. Wells
intelligentsia
- the intelligentsia the educated or intellectual people in a society or community
Word Origin
C20: from Russian intelligentsiya, from Latin intellegentia intelligence
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for intelligentsia
n.
"the intellectual class collectively," 1905, from Russian intelligyentsia, from Latin intelligentia (see intelligence). Perhaps via Italian intelligenzia.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
intelligentsia
[(in-tel-uh-jent-see-uh)]
Intellectuals who form an artistic, social, or political vanguard or elite.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.