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Erudite vs Intellectual - What's the difference?

erudite | intellectual |

As adjectives the difference between erudite and intellectual

is that erudite is learned, scholarly, with emphasis on knowledge gained from books while intellectual is belonging to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive; as, intellectual powers, activities, etc.

As a noun intellectual is

an intelligent, learned person, especially one who discourses about learned matters.

erudite

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Learned, scholarly, with emphasis on knowledge gained from books.
  • * 1850 , , Ch. XII:
  • At all events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind.
  • * 1913 , , The Custom of the Country , ch. 43:
  • Elmer Moffatt had been magnificent, rolling out his alternating effects of humour and pathos, stirring his audience by moving references to the Blue and the Gray, convulsing them by a new version of Washington and the Cherry Tree . . ., dazzling them by his erudite allusions and apt quotations.
  • * 2006 , Jeff Israely, " Preaching Controversy," Time , 17 Sept.:
  • Perhaps his erudite mind does not quite yet grasp how to transform his beloved scholarly explorations into effective papal politics.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    intellectual

    Alternative forms

    * intellectuall (obsolete)

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Belonging to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive; as, intellectual powers, activities, etc.
  • Endowed with intellect; having the power of understanding; having capacity for the higher forms of knowledge or thought; characterized by intelligence or mental capacity; as, an intellectual person.
  • Suitable for exercising the intellect; formed by, and existing for, the intellect alone; perceived by the intellect; as, intellectual employments.
  • Relating to the understanding; treating of the mind; as, intellectual philosophy, sometimes called "mental" philosophy.
  • (archaic, poetic) Spiritual.
  • * 1805 , William Wordsworth, The Prelude , Book II, lines 331-334 (eds. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, & Stephen Gill, published by W. W. Norton & Company, 1979):
  • I deem not profitless those fleeting moods / Of shadowy exultation; not for this, / That they are kindred to our purer mind / And intellectual life ...

    Antonyms

    * non-intellectual

    Derived terms

    * anti-intellectual * intellectual capital * intellectual disability * intellectual honesty * intellectuality * intellectual journey * intellectual property * intellectual rights * organic intellectual

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An intelligent, learned person, especially one who discourses about learned matters.
  • (archaic) The intellect or understanding; mental powers or faculties.
  • Derived terms

    * public intellectual

    See also

    * intelligentsia * egghead * nerd * geek * highbrow