intelligentsia
Society's thinking class
The intelligentsia are the educated elite of a society—intellectuals, academics, writers, and artists considered as a class.
The term often carries a faint note of irony or suspicion, suggesting people who theorize from comfortable distance: The intelligentsia debated policy while workers struggled.
Originally Russian, the word retains associations with revolutionary thought and cultural criticism.
Superior select group
- aristocracyRule by hereditary elite
- nobilityTitled ruling class
- privilegedHaving special advantages
- highbornOf aristocratic birth
patricians · plutocracy · oligarchy · magnate · grandee · socialite · peerage · monarchy
Educated, cultured class
- cognoscentiKnowledgeable insiders of a field
- aesthetesAppreciators of beauty
- tastemakersThose shaping popular preferences
- highbrowIntellectually or artistically sophisticated
cultured · cosmopolitan · sophisticated · erudite · learned · scholarly · refined · cultivated
Jointly organized group
- circleCurved closed shape
- coterieExclusive social circle
- salonGrooming establishment or gathering
- avant-gardeInnovative cultural pioneers
bohemians · academics · thinkers · writers · artists · philosophers · critics · dissidents
elite
Superior select group
- aristocracyRule by hereditary elite
- nobilityTitled ruling class
- privilegedHaving special advantages
highborn · patricians · plutocracy · oligarchy · magnate · grandee · socialite · peerage · monarchy · cream
literati
Educated, cultured class
- cognoscentiKnowledgeable insiders of a field
- aesthetesAppreciators of beauty
- tastemakersThose shaping popular preferences
highbrow · cultured · cosmopolitan · sophisticated · erudite · learned · scholarly · refined · cultivated · discerning
collective
Jointly organized group
avant-garde · bohemians · academics · thinkers · writers · artists · philosophers · critics · dissidents · radicals
- expertsexperts, expert, specialist, masters, specialists
- social classupper class, middle class, lower class, working class, social class
- communismMarx, Marxism, Leninism, Lenin, proletariat
- Slavic cultureRussian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Serbian
- intellectualsscholar, academic, thinker, philosopher, professor
- intelligentsiaprofessors, academics, philosophers, highbrows, literati
intelligentsiaignoramuses
Profoundly uninformed persons
philistines · imbeciles · dunces · anti-intellectuals · know-nothings
intelligentsiathe masses
Common populace collectively
the common people · hoi polloi · the proletariat · working class · peasantry
intelligentsialowbrows
Uncultured people
philistines · plebeians · yahoos · boors · vulgarians
intelligent, intelligence, intellectual, intellect, unintelligent, intelligible, intelligently, unintelligible, intellectuals