IDIOT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does idiot mean? 

• IDIOT (noun)
  The noun IDIOT has 1 sense:

1. a person of subnormal intelligence

  Familiarity information: IDIOT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IDIOT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person of subnormal intelligence

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

changeling; cretin; half-wit; idiot; imbecile; moron; retard

Hypernyms ("idiot" is a kind of...):

simple; simpleton (a person lacking intelligence or common sense)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "idiot"):

mongoloid (a person suffering from Down syndrome (no longer used technically in this sense, now considered offensive))

Derivation:

idiotic (having a mental age of three to seven years)

 Context examples 

She must think me an idiot, or she could not have written so; but perhaps this has served to make her character better known to me than mine is to her.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Am I an idiot and a brute?

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But Maud said, “Tut, tut,” in gentle reproval, and then asked why I was a blithering idiot.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I felt—yes, idiot that I am—I felt degraded.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He laughed like an idiot, while I made for the door.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was a story that profoundly interested Silver; and Ben Gunn, the half-idiot maroon, was the hero from beginning to end.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

This fellow is madly, insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was only a lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away five years at a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a registry office?

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an idiot, however, would have succumbed now.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I didn't mind, for I like 'to see folks eat with a relish', as Hannah says, and the poor man must have needed a deal of food after teaching idiots all day.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

“Blithering idiot!” I was continuing.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)