Imbecile
Imbecile was a medical category of people with moderate to severe mental retardation, 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 "moron" (IQ of 51–70) and "idiot" (IQ of 0–25).
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Famous quotes containing the word imbecile:
“When I lie down to love,
old dwarf heart shakes her head.
Like an imbecile she was born old.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“freeways fifty lanes wide
on a concrete continent
spaced with bland billboards
illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness”
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)
“What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy. Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error: the pride and refuse of the universe.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)