intelligentsia
9
8.1
- noun
- Literature
:
intelligentsia
- Thriving archaeological activity might also help regenerate a once-vibrant Iraqi intelligentsia depleted by violence and emigration.
- Russian intelligentsia
- middle-class intelligentsia
- European intelligentsia
And it's a story about an older couple who are sort of part of the music intelligentsia in France.
- And it's a story about an older couple who are sort of part of the music intelligentsia in France.
- It's what the people who are the intelligentsia, the elite, have chosen to call art, what the textbook producers call art.
- Intellectual commentary out of the intelligentsia and saying just because you've beaten bad philosophy doesn't mean you've beaten bad psychology.
Examples
-
The number of other middle-class intelligentsia, such as social workers and journalists, also mushroomed.
Academic text (1990) -
The political system staunchly opposed the emergence of a coherent intelligentsia and opposed any form of organized dissent.
Academic text (1993) -
And it's a story about an older couple who are sort of part of the music intelligentsia in France.
-
And why should we believe the intelligentsia of today rather than that of yesterday or, presumably, tomorrow?
Academic text (1993) -
Some part of the Slovenian intelligentsia has always been in foreign service.
Fiction book (2001) -
There is at present a great controversy about the conduct of East German authors and the intelligentsia.
Academic text (1993) -
It's what the people who are the intelligentsia, the elite, have chosen to call art, what the textbook producers call art.
-
My interest in these Russian meditations on ethics, time, and the intelligentsia is threefold.
Academic text (1993) -
The views of today's intelligentsia are the privileged vantage point for judging all others.
Academic text (1993) -
The local intelligentsia gathered to discuss the future of literature in their community.
Synonyms
3
8.5
People who read, write, and discuss books and ideas
1
9.9
A group of educated people who shape ideas and culture
How Sophisticated
- Literature
9
8.1
36
3.2
1
6.1
- Offensive
- Offensive
3
3.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
intelligentsia = intelligent (semi-transparent) = intelligent + sia
The relation to 'intelligent' is clear, but the borrowed suffix '-sia' yields a specific collective noun not formed productively in English.
Etymology
Intelligentsia comes from the common word intelligent, which means 'able to understand', and was used in Russia and Poland to name the educated 'group' of people in a society. So intelligentsia means the smart, educated people who shape ideas in the arts, literature, and learning.