NODE / 0436attestedPresent-Day English

intelligent

PRONUNCIATION /ɪnˈtɛlɪdʒənt/

having or showing understanding, judgment, or mental capacity; later also computer-guided

DATE: circa 1540–today
SENSE: mental capacity and judgment
FAMILY: Indo-European / Germanic
CANONICAL KEY: node:1:intelligent:attested:sense:mental-capacity-and-judgment

ANCESTRAL EDGES

ROOT OF THIS ROOT

GO DEEPERborrowingestablished

Latin · Latin antiquity

intelligēns

understanding, discerning

SOUND: English intelligent adapts the Latin participial stem intelligent- with English stress, vowel, and final-consonant treatment.
MEANING: Latin understanding and discernment become the English adjective for mental capacity, judgment, and later computer-guided behavior.
CHRONOLOGY: Merriam-Webster reports first known English use circa 1540.
SCHOLAR: Merriam-Webster · American Heritage editors
CONFIDENCE: established

Intelligent — Word HistorysupportsWord History and First Known Use

Documents direct Latin participial ancestry and circa-1540 English use.

ORIGINAL ↗

American Heritage Dictionary: intelligentsupportsHeadword etymology and definitions

Independently documents the Latin participle and the understanding and judgment senses.

ORIGINAL ↗

OPEN CANONICAL EDGE 402 ↗

DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES

THE NEXT HISTORICAL STEP

No reviewed descendants currently reuse this node. Absence describes the graph, not the entire history of the form.

TRANSITIVE DESCENDANT CLOSURE

EVERY REVIEWED BRANCH FROM HERE

This is the complete downstream closure currently supported by the canonical graph. Every displayed step is a real reviewed edge with its own sound claim, meaning claim, scholar, confidence, and citations.

UNIQUE DESCENDANT NODES: 0
REVIEWED EDGES: 0
DEEPEST PATH: 0
MODERN DOSSIERS REACHED: 0

No downstream edge has cleared review for this node. This is a graph-coverage statement, not a claim that the historical form produced nothing.

“Every” means every descendant in the reviewed SET-U graph. It does not convert missing scholarship or missing ingestion into a claim of historical completeness. The coverage ledger remains the honest denominator.

RECORDED EVIDENCE

ATTESTATIONS / FIRST KNOWN USE

SOURCE-REPORTEDlexicographic first useestablished

circa 1540

Merriam-Webster source-reported English record

Intelligent in the mental-capacity sense.

intelligent dossier · recorded as intelligent

WITNESS RECORD ↗Intelligent — Word History ↗

EDITORIAL REUSE

WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE

01intelligentintelligent · established