Intelligence

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ɪnˈtɛl.ɪ.d͡ʒəns/

Definitions

1. The ability to acquire, understand, and apply knowledge and skills to reason, solve problems, and adapt to new situations
2. The mental capacity for learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and adapting to new circumstances encompasses various cognitive abilities and understanding complex ideas
3. The capacity to learn, comprehend, and utilize information, along with the ability to solve problems, think critically, and adjust to novel environments

Etymology: The Latin root of this word is "legere", which originally meant to gather, choose, or pick out, and only later came to mean read. Put it with the prefix "inter-", meaning "between", and the picture is of someone choosing between things, sorting one thing from another. That sense of discernment is the seed of the modern meaning, since to have intelligence was once to be able to pick out the true from the false, or one thing from its neighbours. The Latin "intelligentia" passed into Old French as "intelligence" and then into Middle English, where it still carried a strong sense of understanding and insight into the nature of things. Over the centuries the word broadened from this kind of discernment toward the general capacity to learn and reason that it names today. The word has a close relative in "intelligentsia", which came into English from Russian and is a doublet of it, meaning the two words share a common origin but reached English by different routes.

Synonyms: understanding, knowledge, wisdom

Antonyms: ignorance, stupidity