An Idiot is a mentally deficient person, or somebody who acts in a foolish, self defeating, uneducated or counterproductive way.

Other synonymous terms include nincompoop, moron and imbecile etc.

Contents 1 History 2 Disability 3 United States law 4 In literature 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Sources 8 External links

History

"Idiot" originally referred to "layman, person lacking professional skill", "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning". Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis (city state), such as the Athenian democracy, was considered dishonorable. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters. Over time, the term "idiot" shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment–individuals who are "stupid". In modern English usage, the terms "idiot" and "idiocy" describe an extreme folly or stupidity, and its symptoms (foolish or stupid utterance or deed). In psychology, it is a historical term for the state or condition now called profound mental retardation.^[1]

Idiot as a word derived from the Greek ἰδιώτης, idiōtēs ("person lacking professional skill," "a private citizen," "individual"), from ἴδιος, idios ("private," "one's own").^[2] In Latin the word idiota ("ordinary person, layman") preceded the Late Latin meaning "uneducated or ignorant person."^[3] Its modern meaning and form dates back to Middle English around the year 1300, from the Old French idiote ("uneducated or ignorant person"). The related word idiocy dates to 1487 and may have been analogously modeled on the words prophet^[4] and prophecy.^[5][6] The word has cognates in many other languages.

Disability

In 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very severe mental retardation. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for mental retardation based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbiciles (sic) had a mental age of three to 7 years., and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.^[7] IQ, or intelligence quotient, is determined by dividing a person's mental age, as determined by standardized tests, by chronological age. The term "idiot" is sometimes used to refer to people having an IQ below 30.^[8][9]

In current medical classification, these people are now said to have profound mental retardation, and the word "idiot" is no longer used as a scientific term.^[1]

United States law

Until 2007, the California Penal Code Section 26 stated that "Idiots" were one of six types of people who are not capable of committing crimes. In 2007 the code was amended to read "persons who are mentally incapacitated."^[10] In 2008, Iowa voters passed a measure replacing "idiot, or insane person" in the State's constitution with "person adjudged mentally incompetent."^[11]

In several states, "idiots" do not have the right to vote:

• Arkansas Article III, Section 5^[12]
• Kentucky Section 145^[13]
• Mississippi Article 12, Section 241^[14]
• New Mexico Article VII, section 1^[15]
• Ohio (Article V, Section 6)^[16]

In literature

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A few authors have used "idiot" characters in novels, plays and poetry. Often these characters are used to highlight or indicate something else (allegory). Examples of such usage are William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and William Wordsworth's The Idiot Boy. Idiot characters in literature are often confused with or subsumed within mad or lunatic characters. The most common imbrication between these two categories of mental impairment occurs in the polemic surrounding Edmund from William Shakespeare's King Lear. In Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, the idiocy of the main character, Prince Lev Nikolaievich Myshkin, is attributed more to his honesty, trustfulness, kindness, and humility, than to a lack of intellectual ability. Nietzsche claimed, in his The Antichrist, that Jesus was an idiot. This resulted from his description of Jesus as having an aversion toward the material world.^[17]

See also

Look up idiot in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Archaic terms for mental retardation
• Idiocracy
• Ignorance
• Stupidity
• euphemism treadmill

Notes

Sources

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. on cretinism
• This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

External links

• Dictionary.Reference.Com "Middle English, ignorant person, from Old French idiote (modern French idiot), from Latin idiota, from Greek idiotès, private person, layman, from idios, own, private."
• Etymonline "c.1300, "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning," from Old French idiote "uneducated or ignorant person," from Latin idiota "ordinary person, layman," in Late Latin "uneducated or ignorant person," from Greek idiotes "layman, person lacking professional skill," literally "private person," used patronizingly for "ignorant person," from idios "one's own".