What's the difference between intelligent and smart?

Also are they synonyms or is it possible to be smart, but not intelligent and vice-versa?|||Intelligence derives from the Latin verb intellegere; per that rationale, “understanding” (intelligence) is different from being “smart” (capable of adapting to the environment).





'Is it possible to be smart, but not intelligent and vice-versa?'


The 2006 movie Idiocracy explored the negative correlation between fertility and intelligence in a humorous vein, by having an average intelligence main character accidentally cryonically frozen for 500 years. Upon his reawakening, he becomes the smartest man on earth because of the cumulative effects of centuries of unintelligent people outbreeding intelligent people.





An intelligent science professor did not have any experience or street-smartness about crime of where he was vacationing. Even though he is found to be a very intelligent person, he was not smart enough of adapting, which allowed his camera with irreplaceable pictures to be stolen.|||Smart is knowing what works. Intelligent is knowing why things work.|||You can be smart and not intelligent. But you have to be smart to be intelligent.


A good example of intelligence is this: It is said that their are extra-terrestrial aliens, yet we have not seen one personally. That makes aliens intelligent


Smart is when someone knows something that amazes the other who didn't know and he will say "boy, you're smart" . Ex: when children talk earlier than the average child his age.|||It is possible for you to be intelligent, but not smart.


" Intelligent " means : intellectually-sharp.


" Smart " means : using one's own intelligence, actively. If you have a high intelligence, but aren't smart enough to use it to benefit you, your intelligence rots.


It is impossible for you to be smart but not intelligent. Without your intelligence, how will develop your smartness ?


It's possible for you to be both smart and intelligent.


Your question is intelligent, and runs on a fuel called smartness.|||I think that those two words are as close to being perfect synonyms as you can get in English. They are both vague and open to interpretation, so the overlap between their sets of meaning and connotation is large. "Smart" is Germanic, and "intelligent" is Latinate, so they have come to resemble such pairs that are a characteristic feature of our language, like "feel/touch", "sight/vision" and a thousand more. "Smart/intelligent" is a little different because "smart" arose as a sort of slang extension of the meaning "painful"---it didn't exist in English in the meaning "intelligent" when that word came in.