What does "intellectually fertile" mean?

Question

Rafiq Jan, in Qatar, asked about the meaning of the phrase "intellectually fertile."

Answer

To understand the meaning of a phrase, it's often helpful to look at the meanings of the individual words.

• intellectually   Intellectually is the adverb form of intellectual, which has the meaning “involving serious thought.”
• fertile   One of the meanings of fertile is “producing a large amount of something.”

Combining these two words

When these two words are combined, in the phrase intellectually fertile, they mean “producing a large amount of serious thought," or, put more naturally, "producing many serious ideas.”

Here is an example sentence with this phrase:

• Sometimes the college dining hall can be a more intellectually fertile environment than the classroom.

In this sentence, the writer is saying that informal conversation in college dining halls can sometimes produce more serious ideas than class discussions.

I hope this helps.