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cerebral

adjectiveadjectiveattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈsɛ.ɹɪb.ɹəl//
  • United Kingdom//ˈsɛ.ɹɪb.ɹl̩//
  • United Kingdom//səˈɹiː.bɹəl//
  • United Kingdom//səˈɹiː.bɹl̩//

Of or relating to the brain, cerebrum, or cerebral cortex.

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or relating to the brain, cerebrum, or cerebral cortex.

  2. 2

    Intellectual rather than emotional or physical.

    Certainly, “Capital” is a cerebral read and the dangers of the world Marx lived in are not all the same as ours.

    His cerebral candidacy, inspired by European and North American political and economic philosophers, and his very appearance, with his light-colored skin, trim physique and penchant for preppy sweaters, contrasted with an electorate largely made up of impoverished Quechua-speaking people and Spanish-speaking mestizos.

Etymology

Borrowing from French cérébral, from Latin cerebrum (“a brain”); equivalent to cerebrum + -al.

adjective

  1. 1

    obsoleteRetroflex.

Etymology

Semantic loan from Sanskrit मूर्धन्य (mūrdhanya, “pertaining to the head”).

Forms

comparative
more cerebral
superlative
most cerebral
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).