Such a word as "idiot", people often use in relation to those whose behavior is in one way or another out of order. You can even say that they are abused. But do everyone fully understand the meaning of this token? The interpretation and etymology of the word "idiot" will be discussed in the article.
Two meanings
Today, dictionaries offer the following two interpretations of the studied token.
The first of these is the term used in psychiatry. It relates to a person who suffers from idiocy, which is understood as an extreme degree of oligophrenia.
The second meaning is figurative, it is found in colloquial speech and refers to a stupid person, a dumbass.
But have there always been such interpretations?
Etymology of the word "idiot"
According to linguists, this token is rooted in the ancient Greek language. There is an adjective ἰδιώτης, the meaning of which is “separate”, “private”. This definition applied to Athenian citizens who did not participate in the life of a democratic society.
This word comes from another ancient Greek adjective - ἴδιος, which can be translated into Russian as “special”, “own”, “own”. The latter, in turn, goes back to the pre-Indo-European form of swe in the meaning of “own”, “self”.
From ancient Greek the word passed into Latin in the form of idiota, and from there into a number of European languages. According to some researchers, it appeared in Russian, being borrowed from the French from the noun idiot. According to others - from the German Idiot.
There is also a folk etymology of the word "idiot". Some see it as an abbreviation, consisting of two words "go" and "from here." Like many popular interpretations, this option, although funny, is unreliable.
In Ancient Hellas
They called idiots people who are excluded from politics. They did not go to the agora, did not participate in the elections. At the same time, the majority of citizens who called themselves “polites” were very kind to all social events.
Those who ignored them were not respected. Therefore, over time, the word denoting a “private person” acquired a dismissive connotation. It began to relate to an undeveloped, limited, ignorant person. Already among the Romans it meant ignorance, an ignoramus, and from here it was not far to a dumbass.
Thanks Dostoevsky
The studied lexeme became popular in Russian in the middle of the 19th century. It spread even more after the Idiot, the immortal creation of the ingenious Dostoevsky, was first published in 1868 in the journal Russian Bulletin.
However, it should be noted that the author had a double meaning in the word. Prince Leo Myshkin is an idiot only from the point of view of representatives of the world of the imperfect and sinful. In fact, he is much wiser and cleaner than them.