idiotism
nounEtymology From Latin idiotismus.
1
Idiom.
2
An overly literal translation of an idiom.
idiotism
nounEtymology From idiot + -ism.
1
Historical Very severe mental retardation.
- He did not perceive that regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem […]1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC:
- Idiotism had long been accepted as hopeless: ‘Absolute idiocy admits of no cure,’ noted the nineteenth-century psychiatrist George Man Burrows (1771–1846).1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 488:
2
A foolish utterance.
- […] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard: