I read recently that the original meaning, in Greek, for someone who thinks differently from everybody else was or is 'an idiot'. Any Greek scholars here who can shed light on this? Thanks, Euphrosene
Idiocloses,... He's my cousin and he doesn't know his spanikopita from a fuckin' helicopiter! There's no hope.
The original Greek adjective idios simply means "private" or "one's own." That meaning lives on in a number of English words like "idiosyncrasy" and "idiolect," a word you'll see on this board meaning the specific language of an individual. The noun idiotes means "an individual," and by extension came to mean a private citizen. The Romans borrowed the word as idiota, meaning an ordinary person or layman. By the Late Latin period it had come to mean an uneducated or ignorant person. When Latin fragmented the word was passed down to the Romance languages with that same meaning. We assimilated it from Old French idiote about 700 years ago. In ancient Greece, an idiotes could be a person so private that he was perceived as selfish, especially if he refused to participate in Athenian democracy. That was considered dishonorable, a mark of bad judgment in public and private affairs. That undercurrent of "having bad judgment" followed the word into French and English, so that "idiot" was not a complimentary term for an uneducated citizen. In modern English the word came to mean simply a fool, a stupid person. It wasn't until around 150 years ago when the soft science of psychology arose, that "idiot" was co-opted to mean "a person with profound mental retardation," and it is now out of vogue in that profession and politically incorrect in public discourse.
Thanks Fragglerocker, Those Greeks, they gave so much! Laconic Spartans, Idiotic Icons and more Gods than you can poke a stick at! Idiolect! Oohhh! I like that, I think that might apply to Old Mate Gustav, Old Mate Draqon and a few others. Or is it The term idiots use for their president Elect... in lieu of a real thinking individual who is so isolated in his thinking as to be referred to as an idiote? Idioms anyone?
