intelligentsia
Americanplural noun
noun
Etymology
Origin of intelligentsia
1905–10; < Russian intelligéntsia < Latin intelligentia intelligence
Explanation
These people are more than class presidents and valedictorians. They're more than super nerds. They're the intelligentsia, the intellectual superstars of society. This adjective for the big-brained elite kind of sounds like the mob — a very, very nerdy mob. It's true, the intelligentsia are the most erudite artists, writers, pundits and thinkers around. They all hang out together to trade brilliant ideas and debate the most heady issues of the day. And because no one else ever has any idea what they're talking about.
Vocabulary lists containing intelligentsia
Ender's Game
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The Vocabulary of Soviet-Era Nostalgia & Cold War Spy Words
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Vocabulary Video Contest (2013) - List 2
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
She said her career as a painter, printmaker, collage and stained-glass artist and teacher meant she mixed with the "intelligentsia of Swansea".
From BBC • Dec. 14, 2024
Once identified among the intelligentsia as a “reformicon” hoping to shift a neoconservative GOP toward a pro-working-class direction, Salam had long curried liberal affection as “literary Brooklyn’s favorite conservative.”
From Slate • Sep. 25, 2024
Artists who operate this way are looked down upon by the art world’s intelligentsia.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 19, 2023
On Friday, Christopher Mathias of HuffPost released an exposé of Richard Hanania, a rising star of the right's supposed intelligentsia.
From Salon • Aug. 8, 2023
Meanwhile, at school I was quietly collecting bits of data, trying to sort out my place inside the teenage intelligentsia.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
