idiotism

English

Etymology 1

From idiot + -ism.

Noun

idiotism (countable and uncountable, plural idiotisms)

  1. (now chiefly historical) Very severe mental retardation.
    • 1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society 2016, p. 488:
      Idiotism had long been accepted as hopeless: ‘Absolute idiocy admits of no cure,’ noted the nineteenth-century psychiatrist George Man Burrows (1771–1846).
  2. A foolish utterance.
    • 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard
      [] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.

Etymology 2

From Latin idiotismus.

Noun

idiotism (plural idiotisms)

  1. Idiom.
  2. An overly literal translation of an idiom.
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