Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A person who is considered foolish or stupid.
- noun A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To make or render idiotic.
- noun A private person.
- noun An unlearned, ignorant, or simple person.
- noun A fool or dupe; one who is fooled.
- noun A professional fool; a jester; a clown.
- noun A human being destitute of the ordinary mental powers; one who is born without understanding or discernment, or who has utterly lost it by disease, so as to have no lucid intervals; one who, by deficiency of the intellectual faculties, is unfit for the social condition, or for taking care of himself in danger.
- noun In old English law, one who has been without understanding or reasoning powers from his birth, as distinguished from a lunatic. “At the present day idiocy is considered as a species of insanity or lunacy.” (Rapalje and Lawrence.)
- Afflicted with or indicating idiocy; idiotic.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete A man in private station, as distinguished from one holding a public office.
- noun obsolete An unlearned, ignorant, or simple person, as distinguished from the educated; an ignoramus.
- noun A human being destitute of the ordinary intellectual powers, whether congenital, developmental, or accidental; commonly, a person without understanding from birth; a natural fool. In a former classification of mentally retarded people,
idiot designated a person whose adult level of intelligence was equivalent to that of a three-year old or younger; this corresponded with an I.Q. level of approximately 25 or less. - noun A fool; a simpleton; -- a term of reproach.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun pejorative A common term for a person of low general
intelligence . - noun obsolete A
medical orpsychological term meaning a person who lacks the capacity to develop beyond the mental age of a normal four-year-old.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a person of subnormal intelligence
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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He combined the term for people with extremely low intelligence with the French word for an extremely learned individual and derived the term idiot savant.
Rainwater Sandra Brown 2009
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The term "idiocracy" means a nation run by idiots - and the term idiot is defined as "an utterly foolish or senseless person" and/or a "person of the lowest order in a former classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old."
David Sirota: How the Media's Proud Know-Nothingism Helped Create the American Idiocracy 2009
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Donna_Prianti_Lupia: the word idiot is the only thing that comes to
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011
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Donna_Prianti_Lupia: the word idiot is the only thing that comes to
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011
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So half the country who voted for this idiot is against this thing!
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CNN can you tell us what your obsession with this idiot is all about?
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If what we've seen from this idiot is her composed, PC responses we are in for some outstanding comedy.
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I am amazed that this idiot is being allowed to hijack this healthcare Bill.
Lieberman: I'll back health care bill without Medicare expansion 2009
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This idiot is a perfect example of inbreeding in the South.
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If this idiot is the Republican nominee, I can think of no better way to assure that Obama will have a second term.
First on the Ticker: Palin will not run for re-election 2009
lampbane commented on the word idiot
"People are idiots. Including me. Everyone is an idiot, not just the people with the low SAT scores. The only difference is that we're idiots about different things at different times. No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot."
November 11, 2007
reesetee commented on the word idiot
Sadly, this is true. :-)
November 11, 2007
Roelne commented on the word idiot
good point
October 18, 2011
ilovesheep133 commented on the word idiot
chill
May 2, 2019