INTELLIGENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does intelligent mean? 

• INTELLIGENT (adjective)
  The adjective INTELLIGENT has 4 senses:

1. having the capacity for thought and reason especially to a high degree

2. possessing sound knowledge

3. exercising or showing good judgment

4. endowed with the capacity to reason

  Familiarity information: INTELLIGENT used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INTELLIGENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having the capacity for thought and reason especially to a high degree

Context example:

an intelligent question

Similar:

agile; nimble (mentally quick)

apt; clever (mentally quick and resourceful)

brainy; brilliant; smart as a whip (having or marked by unusual and impressive intelligence)

bright; smart (characterized by quickness and ease in learning)

born; innate; natural (being talented through inherited qualities)

quick; ready (apprehending and responding with speed and sensitivity)

prehensile (having a keen intellect)

scintillating (brilliantly clever)

searching; trenchant (having keenness and forcefulness and penetration in thought, expression, or intellect)

Also:

smart (showing mental alertness and calculation and resourcefulness)

precocious (characterized by or characteristic of exceptionally early development or maturity (especially in mental aptitude))

Attribute:

intelligence (the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience)

Antonym:

unintelligent (lacking intelligence)

Derivation:

intelligence (the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Possessing sound knowledge

Synonyms:

intelligent; well-informed

Context example:

well-informed readers

Similar:

sophisticated (having or appealing to those having worldly knowledge and refinement and savoir-faire)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Exercising or showing good judgment

Synonyms:

healthy; intelligent; level-headed; levelheaded; sound

Context example:

no sound explanation for his decision

Similar:

reasonable; sensible (showing reason or sound judgment)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Endowed with the capacity to reason

Synonyms:

intelligent; reasoning; thinking

Similar:

rational (consistent with or based on or using reason)

Derivation:

intelligence (the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience)

 Context examples 

Our landlord was an intelligent man, and spoke excellent English, having served for three years as waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield—But you could not marry, sir.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Her distress returned, however, on perceiving smiles and intelligent glances pass between two or three of the lady visitors, as if they believed themselves quite in the secret.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

I once thought that everybody who went to universities, or who sat in the high places in society, was just as brilliant and intelligent as he.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his mental vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Then, after a long pause, he added: "The king of the ape-men was really a creature of great distinction—a most remarkably handsome and intelligent personality. Did it not strike you?"

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The eldest of them, a sensible, intelligent young woman, about twenty-seven, was Elizabeth's intimate friend.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

On the other hand, the research team also identified brain regions that are more strongly 'de-coupled' from the rest of the network in more intelligent people.

(Smart People Have Better Connected Brains, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)