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The Idiot by Evert Larock (1892). An idiot, in modern use, is a stupid or foolish person. 'Idiot' was formerly a technical term in legal and psychiatric contexts for some kinds of profound intellectual disability where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard themself against common physical dangers.
Retard was previously used as a medical term. The verb "to retard" means 'to delay or hold back', and so "retard" became known as a medical term in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to describe children with intellectual disabilities, or retarded mental development. [5]
While the term "idiot" is, in the present day, not used in a medical, legal or psychiatric context, instead meaning a stupid or foolish person, the term previously held meaning as a technical term used in both legal and psychiatric contexts for some type of profound intellectual disability, wherein the disabled person's mental age was considered to be two years or less.
Stupidity is a quality or state of being stupid, or an act or idea that exhibits properties of being stupid. [4] In a character study of "The Stupid Man" attributed to the Greek philosopher Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC), stupidity was defined as "mental slowness in speech or action". The modern English word "stupid" has a broad range of ...
Moron is a term once used in psychology and psychiatry to denote mild intellectual disability. [1] The term was closely tied with the American eugenics movement. [2] Once the term became popularized, it fell out of use by the psychological community, as it was used more commonly as an insult than as a psychological term.
The earliest terms for classifying individuals of low intelligence were medical or legal terms that preceded the development of IQ testing. [10] [11] The legal system recognized a concept of some individuals being so cognitively impaired that they were not responsible for criminal behavior. Medical doctors sometimes encountered adult patients ...
The term imbecile was once used by psychiatrists to denote a category of people with moderate to severe intellectual disability, as well as a type of criminal. [1] [2] The word arises from the Latin word imbecillus, meaning weak, or weak-minded. [3]
Views vary with geography and culture, over time, and among individuals. Many terms that some people view as harmful are not viewed as hurtful by others, and even where some people are hurt by certain terms, others may be hurt by the replacement of such terms with what they consider to be euphemisms (e.g., "differently abled" or "special needs ...