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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.
The root word stupid, [1] which can serve as an adjective or noun, comes from the Latin verb stupere, for being numb or astonished, and is related to stupor. [2] In Roman culture, the stupidus was the professional fall guy in the theatrical mimes.
Gullibility does not appear in Noah Webster's 1817 A dictionary of the English language, [12] but it does appear in the 1830 edition of his American dictionary of the English language, where it is defined: "n. Credulity. (A low word)". [13] Both gullibility and gullible appear in the 1900 New English Dictionary. [10]
Image credits: TrashyBinBag If you talk to a whole bunch of people, they’ll likely have different interpretations of what intelligence really is. For some, it’s all about high IQ scores, book ...
University of Oxford biophysicist Sylvia McLain, writing for The Guardian, says that while the Darwin Awards are "clearly meant to be funny", they do not accurately represent how genetics work, further noting that "'smart' people do stupid things all the time". [24]
The Daily Beast has mad social smarts. No one but Tina Brown, the site's masterful editor in chief would dare publish a survey of America's "smartest" and "dumbest" cities. But Brown thinks she ...
A nerd is a person seen as overly intellectual, obsessive, introverted, or lacking social skills.Such a person may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, little known, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical, abstract, or relating to niche topics such as science fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities.
Moore attributes some of these renegade behaviors to midlife crises suffered by smart individuals whose careers or professional recognition hasn't lived up to their expectations.