Dear Straight Dope:
A long time ago a friend told me that the origin of the word "idiot"
comes from ancient Greece where it was the name given to all those citizens who weren't politicians. Is this true or was my friend joking with me? --Jan Lindkvist, Borlang, Sweden
Guest contributor Fierra replies:
You're asking if the ancient Greeks disagreed with Mark Twain when he said "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." The ancient Greeks evidently lacked the perspective that a couple of millennia gave Twain, because your friend was right: In Greek, idiot was the term for non-politicians, or more precisely, those not active in public life.
The word idiot originated in the English language around 1300 AD. At that time it meant "a person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning," and came to English via French from late Latin idiota, "an ignorant or uneducated man." This in turn came from earlier Latin where it had the same meaning as the original Greek word from which it derived. This Greek word was idiwtes or idiotes in the Latin alphabet.
This had several meanings, the first and most common being "a private person as opposed to a magistrate, ruler, king," just as your friend said. The second meaning was similar--"a common soldier as opposed to a military officer." There's a third meaning we won't mention to Cecil--"a prose writer as opposed to a poet." Then again, the fact that he once wrote an entire column in dactylic tetrameter might make the Master less inclined to take umbrage.
LINK
A long time ago a friend told me that the origin of the word "idiot"
comes from ancient Greece where it was the name given to all those citizens who weren't politicians. Is this true or was my friend joking with me? --Jan Lindkvist, Borlang, Sweden
Guest contributor Fierra replies:
You're asking if the ancient Greeks disagreed with Mark Twain when he said "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." The ancient Greeks evidently lacked the perspective that a couple of millennia gave Twain, because your friend was right: In Greek, idiot was the term for non-politicians, or more precisely, those not active in public life.
The word idiot originated in the English language around 1300 AD. At that time it meant "a person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning," and came to English via French from late Latin idiota, "an ignorant or uneducated man." This in turn came from earlier Latin where it had the same meaning as the original Greek word from which it derived. This Greek word was idiwtes or idiotes in the Latin alphabet.
This had several meanings, the first and most common being "a private person as opposed to a magistrate, ruler, king," just as your friend said. The second meaning was similar--"a common soldier as opposed to a military officer." There's a third meaning we won't mention to Cecil--"a prose writer as opposed to a poet." Then again, the fact that he once wrote an entire column in dactylic tetrameter might make the Master less inclined to take umbrage.
LINK
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