as in intellectual
much given to learning and thinking
finally, a TV series that appeals to a highbrow audience
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in nerd
a person with strong intellectual interests
guests at her elegant dinner parties are a mix of the city's highbrows and captains of industry
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of highbrow
Travis Bean, Forbes.com, 29 Aug. 2025
And well before Telluride co-founder Tom Luddy’s death in 2023, Huntsinger has been flying solo and booking a strong lineup of highbrow awards contenders, classics, and idiosyncratic discoveries.
—Anne Thompson, IndieWire, 28 Aug. 2025
Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 22 Sep. 2023
Tár is its highbrow counterpart, teasing and celebrating the same personal crisis and class issues.
—Armond White, National Review, 27 Jan. 2023
See All Example Sentences for highbrow
Adjective
That combination of highbrow admiration and crowd-pleasing shocks is a treasured feat in horror.
—Travis Bean, Forbes.com, 29 Aug. 2025
And well before Telluride co-founder Tom Luddy’s death in 2023, Huntsinger has been flying solo and booking a strong lineup of highbrow awards contenders, classics, and idiosyncratic discoveries.
—Anne Thompson, IndieWire, 28 Aug. 2025
Noun
The roll call of films ranges from the highbrow to the decidedly grungy, the menu of a true movie fanatic.
—Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 22 Sep. 2023
Tár is its highbrow counterpart, teasing and celebrating the same personal crisis and class issues.
—Armond White, National Review, 27 Jan. 2023
See All Example Sentences for highbrow
Recent Examples of Synonyms for highbrow
Adjective
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The petulant, back-stabby intrigue between various parties here sometimes makes the hero rather unsympathetic, with photogenic singer-actor Pena Hernandez’s puppyish turn not conveying a great deal of complexity, let alone artistic o intellectual potential.—
Dennis Harvey,
Variety,
31 Oct. 2025
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His portrayal of a pompous, yapping intellectual who's rotten to the core rings uncomfortably true, as do the performances of Thatcher and East as their characters nonverbally communicate their discomfort to each other.—
Dennis Perkins,
Entertainment Weekly,
31 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Smith secures a dynasty On a team crowded with superstars, the cerebral catcher can go unnoticed.—
Chandler Rome,
New York Times,
2 Nov. 2025
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When Mercury and Uranus retrograde face off across the sky, the result is purely cerebral and quite electric.—
Valerie Mesa,
PEOPLE,
29 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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The study, published on the open-access scholarly article archive, arxiv, has not yet been peer-reviewed.—
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez,
Fortune,
22 Oct. 2025
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Check back on the second Monday of every month for a new puzzle built on clues connected to scholarly articles available via JSTOR.—
JSTOR Daily,
JSTOR Daily,
14 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Highbrow.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/highbrow. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.
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