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Intellectual vs Polyhistor - What's the difference?

intellectual | polyhistor |

As nouns the difference between intellectual and polyhistor

is that intellectual is an intelligent, learned person, especially one who discourses about learned matters while polyhistor is someone gifted or learned in multiple disciplines.

As an adjective intellectual

is belonging to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive; as, intellectual powers, activities, etc.

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

    polyhistor

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • someone gifted or learned in multiple disciplines.
  • a universal scientist (generally in use to describe such a person when the term philosophy meant the entire summation of all scientific knowledge; i.e., generally from the ancient Greeks into the eighteenth century.)
  • Synonyms

    * (gifted in multiple disciplines) polymath, renaissance man

    Quotations

    * (rfdate) Henry Schumann, in German Art from Beckmann to Richter , page 289. *: [Carlfriedrich] Claus is an artist, though he does not like to call himself one, and a scholar. As such, he personifies the polyhistor , a species rarely found today.