IDIOT

[Dr. Goodword]

• idiot •

Pronunciation: i-di-êt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A completely stupid person.

Notes: Today's Good Word has a lot of familial company: the adjective is idiotic which may be extended to idiotical. You must extend it to create the adverb idiotically, however. The abstract noun is idiocy. Of course, referring to someone's lack of intelligence is considered offensive, so we should only use this word with the greatest care.

In Play: We often say things like, "Only an idiot would try to balance an egg on his nose!" without thinking. However, it is difficult to know ahead of time that the person you are talking to hasn't, in fact, tried to balance an egg on his or her nose. If you must use this very strong word, be sure the person you are referring to is not present: "Judy Side must be an idiot to marry someone who has been divorced five times!"

Word History: Greek idios meant "one's own, personal, private" and the noun from it, idiotes, meant "peculiar nature" or a person of peculiar nature. The word presumably comes from the stem of the reflexive pronoun in Proto-Indo-European, swe- after a long list of changes that can be documented. Idios appears in many compounds borrowed by English, including idiosyncratic, idiopathic, idiom—all referring to types of peculiarities. Swe- has an interesting heritage. It underlies English self, Russian svoi "one's own" and sebya "oneself". The reflexive pronoun in Sanskrit was sva-, with a noun svami "one's own (master)"; English borrowed it as swami. (Today we thank Mark Bailey for cultivating the peculiarity of logophilia, the love of words like this one, which he suggested for our Good Word.)

[skinem]

"One's own, personal, private...peculiar nature"...yup describes me.

But, I'm still happy under the definition that it didn't say "See Skinem"!

[Perry]

idiot
c.1300, "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning," from O.Fr. idiote "uneducated or ignorant person," from L. idiota "ordinary person, layman," in L.L. "uneducated or ignorant person," from Gk. idiotes "layman, person lacking professional skill," lit. "private person," used patronizingly for "ignorant person," from idios "one's own" (see idiom).
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." [Mark Twain, c.1882]
Idiot box "television set" is from 1959; idiot light "dashboard warning signal" is attested from 1968. Idiocy (1487) is perhaps modeled on prophet/prophecy.

The above helps us to understand how the word morphed from peculiar nature to ignorant to just plain stupid.

Interestingly enough, there is a such a word in Hebrew for ignorant. It is hediot, plural hediotot. הדיוט, הדיוטות. It comes from the Greek ιδιωτης, which I assume is the idiotes referred to above.

[gailr]

I came across a curmudgeonly folk etymology of this word: that "idiots" cannot be reasoned with because they listen only to the "god within".

gailr

Cogito, e[r]go sum

[Perry]

Namaste!

[Stargzer]

If your tech support person resets your password to Id10T, well, at least he didn't call you a Logical User, or LUSER.

"In the first place God created idiots; this was for practice. Then he created school boards."

-- Mark Twain

"I bid farewell to the eastern town I never more will see
But work I must so I eat this dust and breathe refinery,
Oh I miss the green and the woods and streams and I don' like cowboy clothes
But I like being free and that makes me an idiot I suppose."


-- Stan Rogers, The Idiot

Stargzer re-inserts one of those infamous disappearing English r's that reappeared as a wayward s and which also somehow managed to terminate a terminal silent e on someone else's web page.

[Bailey]

If you tech support person resets your password to Id10T, well, at least he didn't call you a Logical User, or LUSER.

"In the first place God created idiots; this was for practice. Then he creasted school boards."

-- Mark Twain

"I bid farewell to the eastern town I never more will see
But work I must so I eat this dust and breath refinery,
Oh I miss the green and the woods and streams and I don' like cowboy clothes
But I like being free and that makes me an idiot I suppose."


-- Stan Rogers, The Idiot

my favorite idiot quote

"Idiot wind blowing every time your move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads heading south
Idiot wind blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe"B. Dylan

????

mark who's-the-idiot-again Bailey

[Stargzer]

I don't read 'em, I just write 'em.

[sluggo]

Quoting Stan Rogers, eh? Now I'm impressed.

[Stargzer]

And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Rise again, rise again - though your heart it be broken
Or life about to end.
No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend,
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Alas, we lost a great voice, a great musician, and a great writer when he was killed by a cigarette smoker on that airplane so many years ago.

God damn them all!

[sluggo]

Gzer- there was recently (like a month or 2 ago) a History Channel (or one o' them) program on that flight. They followed Stan's story with an actor although it was strange casting. Unfortunately they didn't use any of his music.

I still remember hearing the news, what a tragedy indeed.