as in nonintellectual
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Recent Examples of anti-intellectual
David Frum, The Atlantic, 20 May 2026
Trump proved to be a vexing ideological lodestar—aggressively anti-intellectual in his attitudes and consistently inconsistent in his views.
—Jason Zengerle, New Yorker, 24 Jan. 2026
Its popularity is improbable by virtue of its unapologetic intellectualism, increasingly alien in a highly anti-intellectual era.
—Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 15 Jan. 2026
In the year 2505, protagonist Joe Bauers wakes up from hibernation to discover an America dominated by corporations and led by profoundly anti-science and anti-intellectual politicians.
—Literary Hub, 7 Jan. 2026
If that — and a title font that echoes Woody Allen’s go-to choice of white Windsor Light Condensed over a black background — sets anti-intellectual alarm bells ringing, then this might not be the film for you.
—Damon Wise, Deadline, 29 Aug. 2025
Conservative faculty are almost impossible to find at Harvard, and that absence has created a warped, often anti-intellectual, climate on campus.
—Samuel J. Abrams, National Review, 19 July 2025
The administration in Washington has seized on this time to advance an agenda that is decidedly anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-immigrant, and even anti-democracy.
—David Rosowsky, Forbes.com, 13 June 2025
Who will be the next university president forced to resign or be fired because of a pro-Palestinian campus protest or because of a linguistic trap set by anti-intellectual members of Congress who demand fealty of all students and faculty in support of Israel’s aggressive bombing of Gaza?
—Chicago Tribune, 30 Dec. 2024
Adjective
So the military ethos under Trump is aggressively anti-intellectual.
—David Frum, The Atlantic, 20 May 2026
Trump proved to be a vexing ideological lodestar—aggressively anti-intellectual in his attitudes and consistently inconsistent in his views.
—Jason Zengerle, New Yorker, 24 Jan. 2026
Its popularity is improbable by virtue of its unapologetic intellectualism, increasingly alien in a highly anti-intellectual era.
—Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 15 Jan. 2026
In the year 2505, protagonist Joe Bauers wakes up from hibernation to discover an America dominated by corporations and led by profoundly anti-science and anti-intellectual politicians.
—Literary Hub, 7 Jan. 2026
If that — and a title font that echoes Woody Allen’s go-to choice of white Windsor Light Condensed over a black background — sets anti-intellectual alarm bells ringing, then this might not be the film for you.
—Damon Wise, Deadline, 29 Aug. 2025
Conservative faculty are almost impossible to find at Harvard, and that absence has created a warped, often anti-intellectual, climate on campus.
—Samuel J. Abrams, National Review, 19 July 2025
The administration in Washington has seized on this time to advance an agenda that is decidedly anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-immigrant, and even anti-democracy.
—David Rosowsky, Forbes.com, 13 June 2025
Who will be the next university president forced to resign or be fired because of a pro-Palestinian campus protest or because of a linguistic trap set by anti-intellectual members of Congress who demand fealty of all students and faculty in support of Israel’s aggressive bombing of Gaza?
—Chicago Tribune, 30 Dec. 2024
Recent Examples of Synonyms for anti-intellectual
Adjective
-
In Cherkashin, Nash Sovremennik presented a model genealogy as well as a model Pushkin scholar: a righteous, passionate, nonintellectual man of the people.—
Kathleen Parthé,
The New York Review of Books,
18 Aug. 2022
-
Such thumbnail indictments of the nonintellectual masses seemed to stem from Hofstadter’s own mounting sense of political and cultural homelessness in the postwar world.—
Chris Lehmann,
The New Republic,
16 Apr. 2020
Noun
-
Embracing a visual vocabulary of the lowbrow and the rudimentary is a tried-and-true method of rebelling against a culture that feels vapid or corporatized.—
Kyle Chayka,
New Yorker,
6 May 2026
-
Executives at NBCUniversal frame Bravo as a brand that represents a particular type of lowbrow-highbrow reality TV, and that even if the channel vanished, the brand could live on.—
Alex Weprin,
HollywoodReporter,
9 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
Stolen bases, once treated as a reckless relic of the uneducated past, are at levels not seen since the freewheeling 1980s.—
Chad Jennings,
New York Times,
21 May 2026
-
The animals help Tim, who proves uneducated in the methods of deduction, investigate a series of local suspects portrayed by Molly Gordon, Hong Chau, Emma Thompson, Kobna Holbrook-Smith, Nicholas Galitzine, Tosin Cole and Conleth Hill, among others.—
Tommy McArdle,
PEOPLE,
7 May 2026
Adjective
-
And using both words does not reveal that a person is ignorant but rather cosmopolitan.—
Kirk Bowman,
The Conversation,
4 June 2026
-
Trump cut education aid, people got ignorant.—
Voice of the People,
New York Daily News,
22 May 2026
Cite this Entry
“Anti-intellectual.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/anti-intellectual. Accessed 14 Jun. 2026.
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