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intelligentsia

UK/ɪntɛlɪˈd͡ʒɛntsɪə/US/ɪntɛləˈd͡ʒɛn(t)si.ə/
nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,455 of 15,258leans written

The intelligentsia is the educated class who shape a country's ideas. The Russian intelligentsia.

The word came from Russia and carries the sense of a class apart from power. The intelligentsia is often spoken of with a faint edge, even by people inside it.

Vladimir Makovsky · Public domain

Definitions of intelligentsia

  1. 1nounintelligentsiaThe educated class who shape a country's ideas.C2

    “The intelligentsia read it and nobody else did.”

intelligentsia is a class.

Where it comes from

From Russian intelligentsiya, ultimately Latin intellegentia; it is a doublet of intelligence.

  1. Latin

    intellegentia — intelligence

  2. Polish

    inteligencja

  3. Russian

    интеллиге́нция

  4. English, today

    intelligentsia

From Russian интеллиге́нция or Polish inteligencja, from Latin intellegentia (“intelligence”). a doublet of intelligence.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

intelligentsia in the wild

  • Polityka has a socially liberal profile, targeting the intelligentsia, setting it apart from the more conservative Wprost and the glossier approach of Newsweek Polska.

    Polityka

  • In the Shinto religion of Japan, Tenjin, also called Tenman Daijizai Tenjin, is the patron kami (deity) of academics, scholarship, of learning, and of the intelligentsia.

    Tenjin (kami)

  • The Ilustrados constituted the Filipino intelligentsia (educated class) during the Spanish colonial period in the late 19th century.

    Ilustrado

  • The Narodniks were members of a movement of the Russian Empire intelligentsia in the 1860s and '70s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism.

    Narodniks

  • Increased government censorship resulted in the persecution of creatives (including poets, writers, composers, theater critics) and the intelligentsia.

    Anti-cosmopolitan campaign

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.