Library / English Dictionary

    IDIOT

    Pronunciation (US): Play  (GB): Play

     I. (noun) 

    Sense 1

    Meaning:

    A person of subnormal intelligenceplay

    Synonyms:

    changeling; cretin; half-wit; idiot; imbecile; moron; retard

    Classified under:

    Nouns denoting people

    Hypernyms ("idiot" is a kind of...):

    simple; simpleton (a person lacking intelligence or common sense)

    Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "idiot"):

    mongoloid (a person suffering from Down syndrome (no longer used technically in this sense, now considered offensive))

    Derivation:

    idiotic (having a mental age of three to seven years)

    Credits

     Context examples: 

    There was a younger brother, too—a complete dumb idiot.

    (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

    Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations!

    (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

    Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;—I pronounced judgment to this effect:—That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.

    (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)


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