idiotism

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Very severe mental retardation.

   • He did not perceive that regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem […]
   • Idiotism had long been accepted as hopeless: ‘Absolute idiocy admits of no cure,’ noted the nineteenth-century psychiatrist George Man Burrows (1771–1846).
2. 2

   A foolish utterance.

   • […] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.
3. 3

   Idiom.

4. ›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer

   1. 4

      An overly literal translation of an idiom.

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