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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
cretin
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Andy is one of the most incompetent cretins I've ever met!
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cretin

Cretin \Cre"tin\ (kr[=e]"t[i^]n), n. [F. cr['e]tin; of uncertain origin.] One afflicted with cretinism.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
cretin

1779, from French crétin (18c.), from Alpine dialect crestin, "a dwarfed and deformed idiot" of a type formerly found in families in the Alpine lands, a condition caused by a congenital deficiency of thyroid hormones, from Vulgar Latin *christianus "a Christian," a generic term for "anyone," but often with a sense of "poor fellow." Related: Cretinism (1801).

Wiktionary
cretin

n. 1 (context pathology English) A person who fails to develop mentally and physically due to a congenital hypothyroidism. 2 (context pejorative English) An idiot.

WordNet
cretin

n. a person of subnormal intelligence [syn: idiot, imbecile, moron, changeling, half-wit, retard]

Wikipedia
Cretin

Cretin may refer to:

  • Cretinism
  • Cretin-Derham Hall High School, a co-educational Catholic high school in Minnesota
  • Cretin Hall
  • Joseph Crétin (1799–1857), American bishop
  • Parliamentary cretinism

Usage examples of "cretin".

Part of me wondered what the hell I was doing, but still I kept banging and kicking and screaming like an acromegalic cretin in labor screaming at her fetus COME ON DOWN, YOU BASTARD, COME ON DOWN!

I prefer to be called Artemisia, though there are some cretins around here who insist on calling me Art.

None of mistresses would ever dream of conceiving a child with one of these churlish cretins.

So Maia and Leie had decided to stay at sea awhile, with the sailors and drifter-folk, until they found some rustic town where local mothers were gullible, and male visitors more taciturn than the gossipy, bearded cretins who sailed the Parthenia Sea.

There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.

Those wog cretins just let them sit in the grease they got them in from the factory.

Only arrogant cretins would think that you could control a man like this just by putting him in a cell.

Jeremy is tempted to say that most talents are likely to be underused in trying to teach cretins, but fortunately Andrea intervenes to ask, 'Have all the staff got degrees?

Ten minutes before noon this ravishingly beautiful young blonde nurse -- that's how those cretins describe her-" "cretins?

Which means these cretins will be formulating policy for the Star Kingdom, which means, effectively, for the entire Alliance, unless I publically oppose them and bring on a constitutional crisis which could be even more dangerous than letting this fumble-fingered troop of self-serving, egotistical, power-hungry incompetents run the show!

And since the Manticorans were cretins enough to bestow the title of 'princess' on my sister, she'll be able to override the objections of her guard detail.

For once, Allison had found the constraints of Grayson's quaint, antiquated sexism rather enjoyable, and she occasionally entertained herself with the hope that enough concentrated bile would finish off the miserable, small-souled cretin once and for all.

Robots were always racing down the walkways, tidying bedrooms, cleaning lavatories, polishing away madly with all the mindless indefatigability of steel cretins.

Besides the beggars, who may or may not be horrid-looking creatures, there are the grinning Cretins, the old women with skins of parchment and the goitre, and even young children with the loathsome appendage, the most wretched and filthy hovels, and the dirtiest, ugliest people in them.

They find me with a knife in my back, which isn't the kind of thing which would do any real harm at all to an immortal deity, and the cretins not only jump to the conclusion that I've been murdered but that the culprit was none other than God Almighty Himself.