Crossword clues for imbecile
imbecile
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Imbecile \Im"be*cile\, v. t.
To weaken; to make imbecile; as, to imbecile men's courage.
[Obs.]
--Jer. Taylor.
Imbecile \Im"be*cile\, a. [L. imbecillis, and imbecillus; of unknown origin: cf. F. imb['e]cile.] Destitute of strength, whether of body or mind; feeble; impotent; esp., mentally wea; feeble-minded; as, hospitals for the imbecile and insane.
Syn: Weak; feeble; feeble-minded; idiotic.
Imbecile \Im"be*cile\, n.
One destitute of strength; esp., one of feeble mind; -- sometimes used as a pejorative term.
(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.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1540s, imbecille "weak, feeble" (especially in reference to the body), from Middle French imbecile (15c.), from Latin imbecillus "weak, feeble" (see imbecility). Sense shifted to mental weakness from mid-18c. (compare frail, which in provincial English also could mean "mentally weak"). As a noun, "feeble-minded person," it is attested from 1802. Traditionally an adult with a mental age of roughly 6 to 9 (above an idiot but beneath a moron).
Wiktionary
a. (context dated English) Destitute of strength, whether of body or mind; feeble; impotent; especially, mentally weak. n. 1 (context obsolete English) A person with limited (l en mental) (l en capacity) who can perform (l en 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 (context pejorative English) A fool#Noun, an idiot#Noun.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Imbecile was a medical category of people with moderate to severe intellectual disability, as well as a type of criminal. The term arises from the Latin word imbecillus, meaning weak, or weak-minded. It included people with an IQ of 26–50, between " idiot" (IQ of 0–25) and " moron" (IQ of 51–70).
The meaning was further refined into mental and moral imbecility. The concepts of "moral insanity", "moral idiocy"," and "moral imbecility", led to the emerging field of eugenic criminology, which held that crime can be reduced by preventing " feeble-minded" people from reproducing.
"Imbecile" as a concrete classification was popularized by psychologist Henry H. Goddard and was used in 1927 by United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his ruling in the forced-sterilization case Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
The concept is closely associated with psychology, psychiatry, criminology, and eugenics. However, the term imbecile quickly passed into vernacular usage as a derogatory term, and fell out of professional use in the 20th century in favor of mental retardation.
In recent decades, the phrases " mental retardation", "mentally retarded", and "retarded" initially used in a medical manner, are regarded as derogatory and politically incorrect much like moron, imbecile, cretin, dolt and idiot, formerly used as scientific terms in the early 20th century. On October 5, 2010, President of the United States Barack Obama signed Senate Bill 2781, known as " Rosa's Law", which changed references in many Federal statutes that referred to "mental retardation" to refer instead to "intellectual disability".
Usage examples of "imbecile".
It seems, therefore, that just as irrational animals are not baptized, so neither should madmen and imbeciles in those cases be baptized.
First Consul to intimate to foreign powers, while at the same time he assured himself against the return of the Bourbons, that the system which he proposed to adopt was a system of order and regeneration, unlike either the demagogic violence of the Convention or the imbecile artifice of the Directory.
Frequently the disease is intensified in the offspring into cretinism, and I can conceive of no sight more disgusting than that which so often met our view, of a goitrous mother suckling her imbecile child.
As he listened he thought of his eldest son, partly imbecile, all but a lusus naturae, separated from his wife immediately after marriage, through whom there could never be succession--he thought of him, and for the millionth time in his life winced in impotent disdain.
Then, as I turned a corner at the highest permissible speed, there stood one of these operetta warriors with feathers in his imbecile hat and a paintbox on his chest.
Damn the miserable stupidity of the Summers, those jeering, stinking imbeciles who would cheerfully carry out their purge of knowledge.
It is quite likely that the extravasation fills the whole brain, in which case he will die in the imbecile state in which he is lying now.
All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions.
You were warned in the letter Rait wrote you not to bring him or that sabered imbecile Narayan Singh.
A tri-coloured cockade placed on the forehead of the great King still bore witness of the imbecile turpitude of the Convention.
When we get to Auckland the drunken imbecile can resume his command, and then he is at liberty to wreck himself, if that is his fancy.
Surely the house of Bercy has cause for joy, with an imbecile for the first in succession and a traitor for the second!
When the imbecile Duke Leopold John died and Philip succeeded, the neutrality of Bercy had been proclaimed, but this neutrality had since been violated, and there was danger at once from the incursions of the Austrians and the ravages of the French troops.
Our priests are not imbecile Trappists and Carthusians, to be reduced to inaction and silence.
The Huntsmen strut about with imbecile narcissism in black leather jackets and studded belts, flexing their muscles for the fags to feel.