intellection

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin intellectiō, intellectiōnem.

Noun

intellection (countable and uncountable, plural intellections)

1. (uncountable) The mental activity or process of grasping with the intellect; apprehension by the mind; understanding.
   • 1892, Walt Whitman, “Notes Left Over: Emerson's Books”, in Complete Prose Works‎^[1]:

     These books will fill, and well fill, certain stretches of life […] But in old or nervous or solemnest or dying hours, when one needs the impalpably soothing and vitalizing influences of abysmic Nature, or its affinities in literature or human society, and the soul resents the keenest mere intellection, they will not be sought for.

   • 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, published 1959, →OCLC:

     None of Mr. Knott's gestures could be called characteristic, unless perhaps that which consisted in the simultaneous obturation of the facial cavities, the thumbs in the mouth, the forefingers in the ears, the little fingers in the nostrils, the third fingers in the eyes and the second fingers, free in a crisis to promote intellection, laid along the temples.

   • 1993, M. J. Edwards, "A Portrait of Plotinus," The Classical Quarterly, New Series, vol. 43, no. 2, p. 487:

     The purpose of philosophy is to unite oneself with the objects of the intellect, and even at last with the One that is above all intellection.

2. (countable) A particular act of grasping by means of the intellect.
   • 1934, R. V. Feldman, “The Metaphysics of Wonder and Surprise”, in Philosophy, volume 9, number 34, page 210:

     Our senses, our instincts, our intellections are all instruments of adaptation.

3. (countable) The mental content of an act of grasping by means of the intellect, as a thought, idea, or conception.
   • 1996, Ananya, "Training in Indian Classical Dance: A Case Study," Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, p. 77:

     When Banerjee talks about the artist's thinking about the music, she is not referring to an intellection about the mechanics of technique.

Related terms

• intellect

References

• “intellection”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “intellection”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.