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halfwit

noun

Etymology

From half + wit.

  1. derived from *wóyde✻ — “to know”
  2. derived from *witaną✻ — “to know”
  3. inherited from *witją✻ — “knowledge; reason; wit”
  4. inherited from *witi✻
  5. inherited from witt — “mind, sanity, sense, understanding”
  6. inherited from wit
  7. formed as halfwit — “half + wit”

Definitions

  1. Someone lacking in intelligence.

    • It has been pointed out in this space before that a number of the titles you'll find shelved under self-help in your local bookshop are, on closer examination, farragos of wooden-headed tripe, written by mountebanks and halfwits.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for halfwit. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA