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The quality or state of being incompetent; want of physical, intellectual, or moral ability; insufficiency; inadequacy; as, the incompetency of a child hard labor, or of an idiot for intellectual efforts. "Some inherent incompetency." Gladstone.

or mental qualities. Indu'd with robes of various hue she flies. Dryden. Indued with intellectual sense and souls. Shak.

To make foolish; to affect with folly; to weaken the intellectual powers of, or to deprive of sound judgment. The judgment of God will be very visible in infatuating a people . . . ripe and prepared for destruction. Clarendon.

Mental; intellectual. [Obs.] A course of learning and ingenious studies. Shak.

Endowed with intellect; having intellectual powers or capacities. [R.] In body, and in bristles, they became As swine, yet intellected as before. Cowper.

Pertaining to, or produced by, the intellect or understanding; intellectual.

Of or pertaining to the intelligence; exercising or implying understanding; intellectual. "With act intelligential." Milton.

To enlighten intellectually; to illuminate; as, to irradiate the mind. Bp. Bull.

g; to crowd against. "Bullies jostled him." Macaulay. Systems of movement, physical, intellectual, and moral, which are perpetually jostling each other. I. Taylor.

which a knowledge of the values and relations of thins, whether of moral qualities, intellectual concepts, logical propositions, or material facts, is obtained; as, by careful judgment he avoided the peril; by a series of wrong judgments he forfeited confidence. I oughte deme, of skilful jugement, That in the salte se…

Intellectual exertion; mental effort; as, the labor of compiling a history.

Figuratively, anything which enlightens intellectually or morally; anything regarded metaphorically a performing the uses of a lamp. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Ps. cxix. 105. Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared. Cowper.

hought, occupation, or policy; method of argument; department of industry, trade, or intellectual activity. He is uncommonly powerful in his own line, but it is not the line of a first-rate man. Coleridge.

Of or pertaining to the mind; intellectual; as, mental faculties; mental operations, conditions, or exercise. What a mental power This eye shoots forth! Shak. Mental alienation, insanity. -- Mental arithmetic, the art or practice of solving arithmetical problems by mental processes, unassisted by written figures.…

In the mind; in thought or meditation; intellectually; in idea.

The intellectual or rational faculty in man; the understanding; the intellect; the power that conceives, judges, or reasons; also, the entire spiritual nature; the soul; -- often in distinction from the body. By the mind of man we understand that in him which thinks, remembers, reasons, wills. Reid. What we mean by min…

Not indued with mind or intellectual powers; stupid; unthinking.

Tending to advance or promote; contributive. "Ministerial to intellectual culture." De Quincey. The ministerial benches, the benches in the House of Commons occupied by members of the cabinet and their supporters; -- also, the persons occupying them. "Very solid and very brilliant talents distinguish the ministerial be…

A person whose intellectual development proceeds normally up to about the eighth year of age and is then arrested so that there is little or no further development.

Obscurity or confusion, as in treatment of a subject; intellectual dullness.