How to Use intellectual in a Sentence

intellectual

1 of 2 adjective
  • So that’s kind of my intellectual job, try to keep pushing that view.
    — Quanta Magazine, 21 Aug. 2025
  • The man’s still handsome, laid back, intellectual and gives a sly smile here and there.
    — James Hibberd, HollywoodReporter, 10 Apr. 2026
  • That’s an intellectual way of putting it.
    — Joshua Rothman, New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2026
  • These thoughts had the effect of a bomb in African intellectual life.
    — Adam Nossiter, New York Times, 19 Mar. 2024
  • The show’s intellectual horrors in no way dilute the on-screen gore, though.
    — Andrew McGowan, Variety, 27 Oct. 2025
  • To be a partisan is to live in intellectual bondage.
    — John H Bolthouse, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9 Oct. 2025
  • The intellectual terroir of a human mind, made available to those who need it most.
    — David S. Bennahum, Fortune, 24 May 2026
  • This may be not just an intellectual position but a strategic one too.
    — Elias Wachtel, The Atlantic, 25 Apr. 2026
  • Take an intellectual approach to change instead of letting brute force lead the way.
    — Eugenia Last, The Mercury News, 23 Jan. 2024
  • Keplinger didn't have the common touch and might be seen as rather intellectual and privileged and aloof and out of touch.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 24 Mar. 2024
  • The games holds that exact intellectual tension at its core.
    — Clara Molot, Vanity Fair, 30 Apr. 2026
  • As with 100 years ago, the intellectual cards have been flung into the air.
    — John Wihbey, Time, 20 Oct. 2025
  • This came with its own risks, intellectual pitfalls that the researchers were careful to avoid.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 27 May 2026
  • Here, the love planet is more intellectual and light-hearted.
    — Valerie Mesa, PEOPLE, 10 Jan. 2026
  • Colbert has never been shy about his intellectual bent.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 15 May 2026
  • Jean Racine inscribed upon the scroll of his own life the rhythm of a tragedy, albeit an intellectual one.
    — Doreen St. Félix, New Yorker, 1 June 2026
  • This pivot would help fuel her intellectual pursuits and catalyze her life of the mind.
    — Literary Hub, 19 Aug. 2025
  • Plus, with a battery that lasts for months of reading and weeks of writing, it’s built to hold your entire intellectual world in one hand.
    — Juhi Wadia, PC Magazine, 26 Mar. 2026
  • Thomas is at once an intellectual hero and a kind of surrogate father to the narrator.
    — Giles Harvey, New Yorker, 30 Mar. 2026
  • But this kind of crutch isn’t available for most of the intellectual problems humanity would like to solve.
    — Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, 18 Jan. 2024
  • The trio, and others in their intellectual circle, share a few radical views.
    — Emma Green, New Yorker, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Any leader looking for greater intellectual value from their summer reading should add these three books to the list.
    — Theodore McDarrah, Forbes.com, 28 May 2026
  • College students are not there to collect credits but to build intellectual range.
    — Ann Kirschner, Forbes.com, 18 Aug. 2025
  • Browne is intellectual, playful, cheeky — the domain of schoolboy dreams and art world fancy.
    — Dave Schilling contributing follow, Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2026
  • My mother had first started playing poker for the fun and for the intellectual challenge.
    — Krista Stevens, Longreads, 12 May 2023
  • Looking at a neck and imagining the scales and seeing the notes that work on the neck is more of an intellectual exercise.
    — George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 Apr. 2026
  • The point of learning to write is not simply intellectual self-discovery.
    — Asim Ali, The Conversation, 4 Sep. 2023
  • What is this if not a kind of literary and intellectual compassion in action?
    — Literary Hub, 14 May 2026
  • Writing has often been viewed as one of the three legs of an intellectual stool—the other two being reading and thinking.
    — Paige Hagy, Fortune, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Truell’s a 25-year-old red-haired coder, known for his technical chops and intellectual bent.
    — Allie Garfinkle, Fortune, 24 Mar. 2026

intellectual

2 of 2 noun
  • He thinks that he's an intellectual, but he doesn't know what he's talking about.
  • She's a hard worker but she's no great intellectual.
  • My dad was a deep thinker, an intellectual, a man with a vocabulary as big as his heart.
    — Annie Lane, oregonlive, 18 June 2023
  • This was true not only of run-of-the-mill Jews but of intellectuals and writers as well.
    — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 15 Feb. 2024
  • The challenge with her was playing such an intellectual.
    — Daniel D'addario, Variety, 13 June 2026
  • One of the rarest things in movies is the credible portrayal of an intellectual.
    — New York Times, 7 Dec. 2021
  • People often assume that someone who is a style icon can’t be an intellectual.
    — Andrew Solomon, Town & Country, 1 Nov. 2022
  • In the face of all this disapproval, a few intellectuals have decided to claim the term for themselves.
    — Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • John Edgar Wideman is that splendid thing, a black intellectual—full of grandeur and agony, rage and poise.
    — Tobi Haslett, The New York Review of Books, 1 Dec. 2022
  • That was the beginning of Weiss’s new role as a public intellectual.
    — Ian Johnson, The New Yorker, 13 Dec. 2022
  • The book gives astonishing insights into the lives and minds of intellectuals at the camp.
    — Douglas Starr, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Aug. 2023
  • And this was disliked by intellectuals.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 11 Oct. 2025
  • Prada still holds its place at the apex of influential fashion with its smart mix of the intellectual and the practical.
    — Samantha Conti, Footwear News, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Scientists were among the intellectuals and researchers who were killed and imprisoned and purged.
    — Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, 23 Jan. 2026
  • In it, a group of Catholic intellectuals discussed a new school opening in Steubenville, Ohio.
    — Emma Green, New Yorker, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Like bacon in the knuckles of a dog handler, power reliably brings intellectuals to heel.
    — Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 18 Oct. 2023
  • The scenes of intellectuals trying to live up to lofty ideals in these circumstances made for incidents ripe with poignant comedy.
    — Joseph Berger, New York Times, 13 Apr. 2023
  • Locke was widely read by French intellectuals, such as Montesquieu and Diderot.
    — Literary Hub, 19 Nov. 2025
  • To these intellectuals, dreams—including daydreams, dreams born in sleep, and nightmares—showed us our hidden desires and demons.
    — Hazlitt, 28 June 2022
  • Other Jewish intellectuals who don’t live in Germany say they have been shunned from coming.
    — Shira Li Bartov, Sun Sentinel, 9 Mar. 2026
  • Justin [Trosper] is a true intellectual, and the contrast of him and Vern was savage.
    — Nina Corcoran, Pitchfork, 2 Oct. 2023
  • Michael Casper profiles the last intellectual.
    — Literary Hub, 12 Jan. 2026
  • Michael Casper profiles the last intellectual.
    — Literary Hub, 14 Jan. 2026
  • But some of those tools were thought by conservative legal intellectuals to run afoul of the strict separation of powers.
    — Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 18 July 2023
  • These movements were led by a broad spectrum of Korean intellectuals and activists.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 23 Mar. 2026
  • By the late 1970s, my father had earned a name as a young public intellectual and Cold War hawk.
    — Nicholas Thompson, The Atlantic, 23 Oct. 2025
  • Weary of war and staring down the likelihood of an unjust peace, Ukrainian intellectuals are plotting out a road map for the future.
    — Linda Kinstler, The New York Review of Books, 20 Dec. 2025
  • Like many ambitious intellectuals, Nkrumah discovered his love of home by leaving it.
    — Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2025
  • Street life flourished and intellectuals gathered at new universities and cafés.
    — Arash Azizi, The Atlantic, 10 Dec. 2025
  • Mod, in the harder of the two roles, plays Emma as an intellectual who’s neither nerdy nor prissy, and capable of having fun.
    — TIME, 6 Feb. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'intellectual.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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