Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An idiom; a peculiarity of phrase; a current deviation or departure from the strict syntactical rules or usages of a language.
- n. A personal peculiarity of expression.
- n. Idiocy; the state of being an idiot.
Wiktionary
- n. dated Very severe mental retardation.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An idiom; a form, mode of expression, or signification, peculiar to a language.
- n. Lack of knowledge or mental capacity; idiocy; foolishness.
Etymologies
- idiot + -ism (Wiktionary)
Examples
“What’s really scary for me is that Giertych is a professor of biology (BA and MA at Oxford, PhD at University of Toronto), and an active member of Institute of Dendrology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who only recently stopped teaching (forest genetics and population genetics )… Who knows what kind of idiotism he promoted in the classroom, under the “scientific banner”.”
“Really, the presidential idiotism of George Bush should be curbed for the sanity and safety of the American people.”
“Third, this myth promotes useful idiotism as quite fashionable way of thinking.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“Mostly the people who come around here are not idiots, but if the argument is true and not just idiotism, then I tend to prefer a climate of diverse, challenging opinion.”
“So far, English speakers have shunned calling anything they say an "idiotism," so the ambiguity remains.)”
“Because by any human standards, this is just crime, inhumanity and idiotism.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“I found the justice but one degree removed from idiotism, and knowing that he would commit some blunder in the execution of his office, which would lay him at your mercy, I contrived to make his folly the instrument of my escape — I was dismissed without being obliged to sign the information I had given; and you took ample vengeance for his tyranny and impertinence.”
“By this time He had discovered that his Neighbour was not very conversible; But whether her silence proceeded from pride, discretion, timidity, or idiotism, He was still unable to decide.”
“Paganism, Christianity, idiotism, there are the three great evolutions of humanity!”
“He did not perceive that regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem, and holds out baits to render thousands idle and vicious.”
Tweets
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