Intellectual scoffed following American measure (8)
I believe the answer is:
literate
'intellectual' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'scoffed following american measure' is the wordplay.
'scoffed' becomes 'ate' ('to scoff' is to eat).
'following' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'american measure' becomes 'liter' (liter is a kind of measure. I am not sure about the 'american' bit.).
'ate' after 'liter' is 'LITERATE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for literate that I've seen before include "Learned" , "Scholarly" , "well expressed" , "Erudite" , "properly educated" .)