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Professional vs Intellectual - What's the difference?

professional | intellectual |

As nouns the difference between professional and intellectual

is that professional is a person who belongs to a profession while intellectual is an intelligent, learned person, especially one who discourses about learned matters.

As adjectives the difference between professional and intellectual

is that professional is of, pertaining to, or in accordance with the (usually high) standards of a profession while intellectual is belonging to, or performed by, the intellect; mental or cognitive; as, intellectual powers, activities, etc.

professional

English

Noun

(wikipedia professional) (en noun)
  • A person who belongs to a profession
  • A person who earns his living from a specified activity
  • An expert.
  • * 1934 , edition, ISBN 0553278193, page 97:
  • I have learned that there is a person attached to a golf club called a professional'. Find out who fills that post at the Green Meadow Club; invite the ' professional , urgently, to dine with us this evening.

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Of, pertaining to, or in accordance with the (usually high) standards of a profession.
  • *
  • *:His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men—physicians and lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained indefinitely at Malvern Hill;.
  • That is carried out for money, especially as a livelihood.
  • (lb) Expert.
  • Derived terms

    * non-professional, nonprofessional * professionalism * unprofessional

    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