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  1. imbecile love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A stupid or silly person; a dolt.
  2. n. A person whose mental acumen is well below par.
  3. n. A person of moderate to severe mental retardation having a mental age of from three to seven years and generally being capable of some degree of communication and performance of simple tasks under supervision. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.
  4. adj. Stupid; silly.
  5. adj. Well below par in mental acumen.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Without physical strength; feeble; impotent; helpless.
  2. Mentally feeble: fatuous; having the mental faculties undeveloped or greatly impaired. See imbecility.
  3. Marked by mental feebleness or incapacity; indicating weakness of mind; inane; stupid: as, imbecile efforts; an imbecile speech.
  4. Synonyms and Foolish, driveling, idiotic. See debility.
  5. n. One who is imbecile.
  6. To make imbecile; weaken.
  7. To embezzle.

Wiktionary

  1. n. obsolete A person with limited mental capacity who can perform tasks and think only like a young child, in medical circles meaning a person who lacks the capacity to develop beyond the mental age of a normal five to seven-year-old child.
  2. n. pejorative A fool, an idiot.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Destitute of strength, whether of body or mind; feeble; impotent; esp., mentally wea; feeble-minded.
  2. n. One destitute of strength; esp., one of feeble mind; -- sometimes used as a pejorative term.
  3. n. (Psychology) A person with a degree of mental retardation between that of an idiot and a moron; in a former classification of mentally retarded person, it applied to a person with an adult mental age of from four to eith years, and an I.Q. of from 26 to 50.
  4. v. obsolete To weaken; to make imbecile.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a person of subnormal intelligence
  2. adj. having a mental age of three to seven years

Etymologies

  1. From Latin imbēcillus ("weak, feeble"), literally “without a staff”. (Wiktionary)
  2. From obsolete French imbécille, weak, feeble, from Old French, from Latin imbēcillus : in-, not; see in-1 + possibly bacillum, staff, diminutive of baculum, rod; see bak- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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synonyms (14)

Words with the same meaning

  1. feeble-minded
  2. weak
  1. idiotic
  2. feeble
  1. impotent
  2. weaken
  1. defective
  2. driveler
  1. idiot
  2. mooncalf
  1. nidget
  2. fool
  1. half-wit
  2. cretin

equivalents (1)

Other words for ‘imbecile’

  1. retarded

same context (14)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. idiot
  2. simpleton
  1. buffoon
  2. coward
  1. blackguard
  2. oaf
  1. fool
  2. dullard
  1. madman
  2. duffer
  1. brute
  2. impostor
  1. beneficent
  2. cripple

reverse dictionary (17)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. imbecile
  2. feeble-minded
  3. dote
  1. dotish
  2. incapable
  3. imbecility
  1. Daffy
  2. anile
  3. doting
  1. to lose one's mind
  2. committee
  3. dotard
  1. fatuous
  2. innocent
  3. Luddite
  1. silly
  2. slobber

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Comments

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  • joannasephine And apparently there's a number: having an IQ of between 25 and 50.
    (So worse than a moron.) Jul 1, 2009

  • wytukaze Citation as adjective at sedge. Nov 12, 2008

  • brtom By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile. Yes, I must.
    Joyce, Ulysses, 3 Dec 29, 2006

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‘imbecile’ has been looked up 3185 times, loved by 1 person, added to 50 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 14.