As a role, an intellectual is a person who uses intellect in either a professional or an individual capacity. As a substantive or adjective, it refers to the work product of such persons, to the so-called "life of the mind" generally, or to an aspect of something where learning, erudition, and informed and critical thinking are the focus, as in "the intellectual level of the discourse on the matter was not high".



The intellectual is a specific variety of the intelligent, which unlike the general property, is strictly associated with reason and thinking. Many everyday roles require the application of intelligence to skills that may have a psychomotor component, for example, in the fields of medicine, sport or the arts, but these does not necessarily involve the practitioner in the "world of ideas". The distinctive quality of the intellectual person is that the mental skills he or she demonstrates are not simply intelligent, they focus on thinking about the abstract, philosophical and esoteric aspects of human inquiry and the value of their thinking is not intrinsically judged on practically useful outcomes. Traditionally, the scholarly and the intellectual classes were closely identified; however, while an intellectual need not necessarily be actively involved in scholarship, he or she may have an academic background and will typically have an association with a profession.

More broadly, any work of the mind may be termed intellectual property, whether or not its content is "intellectual" in the sense covered in this article.