英语词汇idiot的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

idiot. When Horace Walpole dubbed Oliver Goldsmith “The Inspired Idiot,” he wasn’t aware that the ancient Greeks had of- ten termed prose writers idiots. But idiots, the Greek word for idiot (from idios, private), first meant a private person, some- one who kept to himself, often not active in the affairs of state; only later did it come to mean uneducated or ignorant. Al- though the Greek expression a poet or an idiot calls a prose writer an “idiot,” it contrasts not the intelligence but the medi- um of the two callings, the poet a public person who often, in fact, read his or her works at public festivals. In more recent times novelist Georges Simenon said that Count Keyserling once called him an “imbecile de genie.” Today idiot usually means a “foolish person” or, scientifically, someone with a mental age no higher than that of a child of three or four years of age. Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary (1906) defines an idiot as “a member of a large and powerful tribe whose influ- ence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.”

词汇	idiot
词源	idiot. When Horace Walpole dubbed Oliver Goldsmith “The Inspired Idiot,” he wasn’t aware that the ancient Greeks had of- ten termed prose writers idiots. But idiots, the Greek word for idiot (from idios, private), first meant a private person, some- one who kept to himself, often not active in the affairs of state; only later did it come to mean uneducated or ignorant. Al- though the Greek expression a poet or an idiot calls a prose writer an “idiot,” it contrasts not the intelligence but the medi- um of the two callings, the poet a public person who often, in fact, read his or her works at public festivals. In more recent times novelist Georges Simenon said that Count Keyserling once called him an “imbecile de genie.” Today idiot usually means a “foolish person” or, scientifically, someone with a mental age no higher than that of a child of three or four years of age. Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary (1906) defines an idiot as “a member of a large and powerful tribe whose influ- ence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.”
随便看	dish dismal dismal swamp disneyan distance lends enhancement to the view district attorney district of maine dithyramb ditto ditto marks divan dixie dixie cup dixieland diy dna do a brodie do a louis do a number on doberman pinscher doctor doctor diet doctor quiet and dr merryman doctor dryasdust doctor eliot-s five-foot shelf doctor feelgood