Meaning & use
Intelligentsia
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the class of educated, intellectually engaged people in a society, often involved in culture, politics, or the arts
See it in a sentence
The city's coffeehouses were once famous gathering spots for the local intelligentsia.
The novel satirizes the pretensions of the literary intelligentsia.
A note on using this word
Borrowed from Russian 'intelligentsiya,' the term originally described the educated class in 19th-century Russia.
Words with a similar meaning
intellectualsliterati
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