Other forms: intellects
Intellect is the power of the mind to reason and understand. Thinking, as a capacity rather than an activity.
The word is formal and slightly grand, and it appears most in writing about people, so a man of considerable intellect is a compliment that keeps its distance. It also names a person, since a great intellect means a great thinker. The related adjective intellectual describes both the activity and, as a noun, somebody whose work is thinking, and in British English that noun carries a faint suspicion it does not carry in France.
1nounintellectThe capacity of the mind to reason and understand.
“Nobody doubted the range of her intellect.”
To understand is to read between. Latin intellegō joins inter, between, to legō, to read or to gather, so the intellect is what picks the meaning out from among the words.
Proto-Indo-European
*leǵ-
Latin
intellēctus — understanding, intellect
English, today
intellect
Built from
Borrowed from Latin intellēctus (“understanding, intellect”), from Latin intellegō (“understand; reason”), from inter (“between, among”) + legō (“read”), with connotation of bind.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA