intuitive means spontaneous, without requiring conscious thought. It carries an Arena rating of 1534, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, intuitive ranks #1,139 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #3,511 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #5,776 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #8,526 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words.
intuitive is pronounced /ɪnˈtjuːɪtɪv/.
Why “intuitive” is a great word
Perceived, understood, or known immediately and directly without conscious reasoning. From the Medieval Latin intuitivus, from Latin intueri ("to look at, consider"), first attested in English c. 1640s. Unlike "instinctive" (which suggests a hard-wired biological impulse) or "analytical" (which is the laborious architecture of logic), the intuitive is the mind's silent leap. It is the chess master's move before he can name the threat, the mother's certainty from a faint cry, the geologist's hand resting on a stone and knowing its story—the profound, unlettered knowledge that arrives whole, like a letter already opened.
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French intuitif, from Medieval Latin intuitivus, from Latin intueri.
adj
- Spontaneous, without requiring conscious thought.e.g.“The intuitive response turned out to be correct.”
- Easily understood or grasped by intuition.e.g.“Designing software with an intuitive interface can be difficult.”
- Having a marked degree of intuition.e.g.“I'm real intuitive, everyone is, we're just conditioned not to trust it.” — 2019, Justin Blackburn, The Bisexual Christian Suburban Failure Enlightening Bipolar Blues, page 21:
noun
- One who has (especially parapsychological) intuition.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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