idiotism

From idiot +‎ -ism.

idiotism (countable and uncountable, plural idiotisms)

1. (now chiefly historical) Very severe mental retardation.
   • 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: […] Peter Edes for Thomas and Andrews, […], published 1792, →OCLC:

     He did not perceive that regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem […]

   • 1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 488:

     Idiotism had long been accepted as hopeless: ‘Absolute idiocy admits of no cure,’ noted the nineteenth-century psychiatrist George Man Burrows (1771–1846).

2. A foolish utterance.
   • 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard:

     […] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.

From Latin idiotismus.

idiotism (plural idiotisms)

1. Idiom.
2. An overly literal translation of an idiom.

Borrowed from French idiotisme.

idiotism n (plural idiotisme)

1. idiotism