intellectualoid

English

Etymology

Coined by columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell writing in The American Spectator from intellectual +‎ -oid.

Noun

intellectualoid (plural intellectualoids)

1. (US, derogatory) One with intellectual pretensions [from 1970s]
   • 2010 March 12, R. Emmett Tyrrell, “The angry left joins talk radio”, in The Washington Examiner:

     In the aftermath of this attack, it was reported that Bedell was a pot-smoking intellectualoid from California who left word on the Internet that according to his findings, a "coup regime" took over Washington at the time of President John F. Kennedy's assassination and has governed the country "up to the present day."

   • 2015 June 17, L. E. Ikenga, “Obama and the Black Intellectualoids”, in American Thinker:

     Barack Obama owes his position to his membership in a class that is destroying America: the intellectualoids -- shallow people able to fool others into believing they possess superior intellects.

   • 2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 37:

     I do not think the press is "an enemy of the people," but, as Dwight Eisenhower said in 1964, its ranks are filled with "sensation-seeking columnists and commentators" whose writings mark them as little more than intellectualoids.

Usage notes

• Originating in a conservative publication, intellectualoid is used mostly or exclusively by conservatives discussing liberals.