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Idiot   /ˈɪdiət/   Listen
noun
Idiot  n.  
1.
A man in private station, as distinguished from one holding a public office. (Obs.) "St. Austin affirmed that the plain places of Scripture are sufficient to all laics, and all idiots or private persons."
2.
An unlearned, ignorant, or simple person, as distinguished from the educated; an ignoramus. (Obs.) "Christ was received of idiots, of the vulgar people, and of the simpler sort, while he was rejected, despised, and persecuted even to death by the high priests, lawyers, scribes, doctors, and rabbis."
3.
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. "Life... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
4.
A fool; a simpleton; a term of reproach. "Weenest thou make an idiot of our dame?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books



... of disease is, to the philosophical mind, of all others the most essentially foolish—indeed, we can hardly call to mind any other so thoroughly calculated to turn the average well-constructed man or woman into an exuberantly incurable idiot. For what does it amount to when we come to pan it out? If there exist grounds for the misgiving, why then it is going begging—grovelling for something which the other party has not got to give; if groundless, is it not a fulfilling of the homely ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... them off. I was defenseless. I must get away. I ran to the top of the staircase and looked down. There was that fool Peppo, beleaguered by a bevy of fair women. They were simply looting him, and he was grinning like an idiot. I gathered up my train, ran down, and made a dash at him, yanked him out of that circle of rich contours, and dragged him by a limp cuff up the stairs after me. I told him that I must escape from that house ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... firm of Verity, Bulmer an' Co. See? Wot's wrong with that? I've done everything for you up to date; now it's your turn. Simple, isn't it? P'raps I ought to have explained things differently, but it didn't occur to me you'd hobject to bein' the wife of a millionaire, even if 'e is a doddrin' owd idiot to talk of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... "Fool!—madman—insane idiot!" he cried, tearing the note to pieces, and trampling on the fragments in his ungovernable rage: "how have you marred your own fortune, destroyed your best hopes, and annihilated all my ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... tired I slept; and when I woke I stretched myself like a giant refreshed. It was a pure joy to me in those days to close my fingers into a fist and see the beauty and firmness of my muscles. When solemn, civilised people spoke to me of duty and work, I listened like an idiot. I had nothing in my consciousness to help me to understand them. I knew no more of duty than Crusoe on his island; and as for work, I had no ambition,—why, then, should I work? I read, of course; but I read because I liked it, not because ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban


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