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Definition of "intelligible" []

  • Capable of being understood: an intelligible set of directions. (adjective)
  • Capable of being apprehended by the intellect alone. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "intelligible" in a sentence
  • "These principles and causes are what we call the intelligible or the real world; and the sensations, when they have been so interpreted and underpinned, are what we call experience."
  • "This admission involves, consciously or unconsciously, the admission of all the principles contended for in 'Life and Habit'; principles which, if admitted, make the facts of heredity intelligible by showing that they are of the same character as other facts which we call intelligible, but denial of which makes nonsense of half the terms in common use concerning it."
  • "Here now is the extreme limit of all moral inquiry, and it is of great importance to determine it even on this account, in order that reason may not on the one band, to the prejudice of morals, seek about in the world of sense for the supreme motive and an interest comprehensible but empirical; and on the other hand, that it may not impotently flap its wings without being able to move in the (for it) empty space of transcendent concepts which we call the intelligible world, and so lose itself amidst chimeras."