Idiot (pronounced id-ee-uht)
(1) In informal use (1) a foolish or senseless person (derogatory)
or (2) an affectionate expression of disapprobation or disagreement.
(2) In medicine & psychology, a person of the lowest
order in the former classification of intellectual disability (a mental age of
less than three years old and an IQ (intelligence quotient) lower than 25; no
longer in technical use; considered now generally offensive unless used
affectionately.
1250–1300: From the Middle English idiote & ydiote, from the twelfth century Old French idiote (later idiot) (uneducated or ignorant person), from the Late Latin idiōta (an ignorant person), from the Ancient Greek ἰδιώτης (idiṓtēs) (private person, layman, person lacking skill or expertise; an ignoramus (as opposed to a writer, soldier or skilled workman), the construct being idiō- (a lengthened variant of idio-, perhaps by analogy with stratiōtēs (professional soldier) derived from stratiá (army)) + -tēs (the agent noun suffix). The Ancient Greek ἴδιος (ídios) meant " one's own, pertaining to oneself, private" and was a doublet of idiota. Dialectical variations in English and Irish included eejit, idjit & idget. The plural is idiots. English offers a rich array of alternatives to idiot: fool, moron, nitwit, twit, blockhead, bonehead, cretin, dimwit, dork, dumbbell, dunce, ignoramus, imbecile, muttonhead, nincompoop, ninny, pinhead, simpleton, clodpoll, jerk, half-wit; dolt, dunce & numskull.
Use of the word "idiot" in headlines can hurt feelings.
The original meaning was “a person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning;" but this in Middle English later in the fourteenth century extended to "a simple man, uneducated person, layman". A meaning shift had also happened in Latin, the classical form meaning “an ordinary person, layman; outsider" whereas in the Late Latin it conveyed the sense of "an uneducated or ignorant person". This mirrored what happened with the Greek idiotes which meant literally "a private person" (ie a layman, someone uninvolved in public affairs) but came to be applied patronizingly to suggest someone "ignorant and uneducated". In plural, the Greek word could mean "one's own countrymen." In medieval English common law, the formalized distinction was between an idiot (one who has been without reasoning or understanding from birth) and a lunatic (who became that way later in life), and the difference could be important in determining the responsibility and punishment for crimes committed. The idiot savant first appeared in medical literature in 1870; idiot box was first used to describe television in 1959 and, given that broadcasting had begun in the 1930s, it’s surprising it took that long to work that out; idiot light to describe the dashboard warning lights in cars is attested from 1961, a reference to drivers so lacking in mechanical sympathy not to notice indications of problems or bother to scan gauges.
Comrade Lenin agitprop.
The term useful idiot is from political science and so associated with Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924; first leader of Soviet Russia 1917-1922 & USSR 1922-1924) that it's attributed to him but there's no evidence he ever spoke or wrote the words. It became popular during the Cold War to describe pro-communist intellectuals and apologists in the West, the (probably retrospective) association with Lenin probably because had the useful idiots actually assisted achieving a communist revolution there, their usefulness outlived, he'd probably have had them all shot. Although it took many Western intellectuals decades to recant (some never quite managed) their support for the Soviet Union, the watershed was probably Comrade Khrushchev's (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) so called "Secret Speech" (On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences) to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956 in which he provided a detailed critique of the rule of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), especially the bloody purges of the late 1930s. Some had however already refused to deny what had become obvious to all but avid denialists, The God that Failed a collection of six essays published in 1949 by poet Stephen Spender (1909-1995) et al in which the writers lay bare their sense of betrayal and disillusionment with communism because of the totalitarian state built by Stalin which was in so many ways just another form of fascism.
Idiot, Imbecile & Moron
Idiot, imbecile, and moron were in the early twentieth
century used in a psychological classification system, each one assigned to a specific
range of abilities.
Idiots: Those so defective that the mental development
never exceeds that or a normal child of about two years.
Imbeciles: Those whose development is higher than that of
an idiot, but whose intelligence does not exceed that of a normal child of
about seven years.
Morons: Those whose mental development is above that of
an imbecile, but does not exceed that of a normal child of about twelve years.
Of these three words moron is the newest, created only in
the early twentieth century, coined specifically for the purpose of medical
diagnosis. Moron is from the Ancient Greek
mōros (foolish, stupid), the root
shared with the rare morosoph (a
learned fool). Imbecile dates from the
sixteenth century, an adjective meaning "weak, feeble", from the
Classical Latin imbecillus (weak,
weak-minded) and not until the early nineteenth century did it begin to be used
as a noun. Moran actually replaced “feeble-minded”
and “simpleton” (introduced in 1846) but neither were ever standardised in the
medical lexicon. The clinical use is now
obsolete but the generalized use of all three is well established as terms of
opprobrium for someone who acts in some dopey way or says something stupid, but,
the convention is now they can only be applied to someone not cognitively
impaired, an inversion of their original purpose when part of the system of
classification.
In the early 1900s, as the profession of psychiatry
became more accepted within medicine, the system of classification became
increasingly scientific: Idiots were those with IQs between 0–25, imbeciles
between 26-50 and morons between 51–70. The
interest in the then fashionable field of eugenics saw further refinements with
a teleological flavor: the concepts "moral insanity", "moral
idiocy"," and "moral imbecility" used by the emerging field
of eugenic criminology, which held crime could be reduced by preventing
"feeble-minded" people from reproducing and the US Supreme Court used
the terminology in the judgment of forced-sterilization case Buck v Bell (274 U.S. 200 (1927)).
The later introduction of retard, retarded & retardation
was a genuine attempt to de-stigmatize those once labeled idiots, imbeciles
& morons. The process was the same
as the invented word moron replacing “simpleton” and “feeble-minded” (from the Latin
flebilis (to be lamented). Retarded was from the Latin retardare (to make slow, delay, keep
back, or hinder) and was first used in relation to developmental delay in 1895
and was introduced as an alternative to idiot, moron, and imbecile because at
the time it wasn’t derogatory, being a familiar technical term from engineering
and mathematics but the associative connection meant that by the 1960s, it had
become an insult. As "retarded"
and the related clinical terms from psychiatry appeared on the euphemism
treadmill they gradually assumed their derogatory connotations. It
seems to be an organic process in language, an original term, neutral in
meaning, enters public use and because of the thing with which it’s associated,
becomes pejorative, the process noted also with words which become racial
slurs. It’s a very particular process: “Chinaman”
thought pejorative while “Englishman” is not; “Aussie” a term of endearment
whereas as “Paki” is a slur although that too is circumstantial, commercial television
station Channel 9 (Australia) using “The Pakis” in their promotional material for
the coverage of the 1983-1984 cricket season.
It wouldn’t now be used.
So, as sympathy emerged for various sensitivities, the
search for connotatively neutral replacements settled on variations of “intellectual
disability”, the new sub-categories being profound, severe, and moderate levels. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1968
published (in an out-of-sequence amendment to the ICD-8 (International
Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) a classification
of intellectual disability (ID), based on what they called “relative degrees of
cognitive functioning”:
Profound ID: IQ
below 20-25
Severe ID: IQ 20-25 to 35-40
Moderate ID: IQ
35-40 to 50-55
Mild ID: IQ
50-55 to 70
The alignment with the old system was idiot=profound, imbecile=moderate/severe
and moron or feeble minded=mild but, by the time the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-IV) and ICD-10 were published in 1994, the profession was moving
away from the use of raw IQ scores to something more nuanced, the DSM noting
the importance of assessing “dysfunction or impairment” in at least two areas
including “communication, self-care, home living, social/interpersonal skills,
use of community resources, self direction, functional academic skills, work,
leisure & health and safety”. The
ICD noted “mental retardation is a condition of arrested or incomplete
development of the mind, which is especially characterized by impairment of
skills manifested during the developmental period, contributing to the overall
level of intelligence- cognitive, language, motor and social abilities”. However, the IQ baselines remained and the DSM-5
refined the model further, noting an intellectual disability should be defined
by:
(1) Current intellectual deficits of two or more standard
deviations below the population mean, which generally translates into
performance in the lowest 3% of a person’s age and cultural group, or an IQ of
70 or below.
(2) Concurrent deficits in at least two domains of
adaptive functioning of at least two or more standard deviations, which
generally translates into performance in the lowest 3 % of a person’s age and
cultural group, or standard scores of 70 or below.
Both assessments need to be measured with an individualized, standardized, culturally appropriate, psychometrically sound measure and needed to assess (1) conceptual skills (communication, language, time, money & academic), (2) social skills (interpersonal skills, social responsibility, recreation & friendships) and (3) practical skills (daily living skills, work & travel). US legislation in 2010 required the terms "mental retardation" and" mentally retarded" be removed from federal records and replaced with "intellectual disability" and "individual with an intellectual disability", a change reflected in the DSM-5 (2013).
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