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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
idiocy
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As a prominent figure in Rottweiler rescue, she's stubbed her toe on more unfair bullying and downright idiocy than most.
▪ But she stayed on this balcony, her eyes on him, on this shape which fear had reduced to animal idiocy.
▪ If not insanity and idiocy, then consumption would kill them off.
▪ It stung, that eruption of uncomprehending idiocy.
▪ Learning a language means returning to a state of near idiocy.
▪ That idiocy about H. G. Wells.
▪ There was only one way to knock such idiocy in the head.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Idiocy

Idiocy \Id"i*o*cy\ ([i^]d"[i^]*[-o]*s[y^]), n. [From idiot; cf. Gr. ? uncouthness, lack of education, fr. ?. See Idiot, and cf. Idiotcy.] The condition or quality of being an idiot; absence, or marked deficiency, of sense and intelligence.

I will undertake to convict a man of idiocy, if he can not see the proof that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles.
--F. W. Robertson.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
idiocy

1520s, from idiot on model of prophecy, etc. Early alternatives included idiotacy (1580s), idiotry (1590s).

Wiktionary
idiocy

n. 1 (context psychology English) The state or condition of being an idiot; the quality of having an intelligence level far below average; mental retardation. 2 An act lacking intelligence or sense; an instance of senselessness; extremely foolish behaviour.

WordNet
idiocy

n. extreme mental retardation [syn: amentia]

Usage examples of "idiocy".

He felt the hopelessness of this idiocy, and then Mendora called them forward.

Or commanded to work some idiocy like burn all the crops or poison the Silverflow itself?

Of course he had been through that mess on Sirialis, and being shot in the gut was, according to the redoubtable Captain Serrano, a specific for youthful idiocy, but still.

The stone idiocy of this had the Caucusers in the crowd screaming, but they could not hold back the armed few who went to punish the xenians.

There was a time, which the Councillors described briefly in shameThe Idiocy, they called itwhen the train itself had been ripped by civil war, over strategy, over how to continue.

They buried their own dead where they could, except for one, a Remade woman famous for mediating during The Idiocy, long before.

Tora only half listened as Anna harangued her about the idiocy of her actions.

As a matter of fact, I consider it my personal obligation, my reason for existence, if you want to know the truth of it, to fight idiocy at every turn.

If there is to be a war, it will be the supremest act of idiocy that has perhaps occurred in the history of humankind.

Within minutes, he was springing into action over the spires of his city and into the idiocy that it was his job to somehow hold at bay.

The second is, as I said, that she believes in this idiocy, and I wish to tell her that she is mistaken.

Raven had indeed been clutching that bit of romantic idiocy to his bosom.

But so long as the fleet is strong, something perhaps can be done to save Earth from the idiocy of the politicians.

Dostoevsky is in love with the freedoms released by the rhetoric of idiocy and the poetics of epilepsy.

He blocked any opportunity for me to be promoted off the Pagh, keeping me firmly under his heel while he stumbled through command with the same idiocy he displayed against the Enterprise .