imbecile

American  

[im-buh-sil, -suhl, -seel] / ˈɪm bə sɪl, -səl, -ˌsil /

noun

• imbeciles
  plural

1. Informal. a dunce; blockhead; dolt.

   Don't stand there like an imbecile. Open the door!

2. Psychology. (no longer in technical use; now considered offensive) a person of the second order in a former and discarded classification of intellectual disability, above the level of idiocy, having a mental age of seven or eight years and an intelligence quotient of 25 to 50.

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adjective

1. Informal. stupid; silly; absurd.

2. Usually Offensive. showing mental feebleness or incapacity.

3. Archaic. weak or feeble.

imbecile British  

noun

1. psychol a person of very low intelligence (IQ of 25 to 50), usually capable only of guarding himself against danger and of performing simple mechanical tasks under supervision

2. informal an extremely stupid person; dolt

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adjective

1. of or like an imbecile; mentally deficient; feeble-minded

2. stupid or senseless

   an imbecile thing to do

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• imbecility
  noun
• imbecilic
  adjective
• imbecilely
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• imbeciles
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of imbecile

First recorded in 1540–50; earlier imbecill, from Latin imbēcillus “weak”; -ile replacing -ill by confusion with suffix -ile

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Explanation

If your best friend calls you an imbecile, he's implying that you're stupid, and he's probably pretty angry with you. An imbecile is an extremely stupid person. The noun imbecile is used informally as an insult to mean "fool". Its origins are in the Latin word imbecille, "weak or feeble," and it was an official medical term for people with a specific (and low) I.Q. in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Patients who were classified as imbeciles were said to have no more intelligence than a seven year-old child.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

imbecile imbeciles

But I will say you know, the Beatles wrote "Helter Skelter" and it's not their fault that some imbecile used it incorrectly.

From Salon ● Aug. 30, 2022

“That was the message that the universe was shouting at us loud and clear. And it would’ve taken an imbecile to ignore that market message,” Needham said.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 2, 2021

To me, she wasn’t an imbecile, but emblematic of these impossible standards, ones that Zellweger bore with painfully apologetic brightness.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 24, 2020

Mr. Galifianakis does his best brain-dead imbecile imitation as he portrays David Scott Ghantt, the real guy who stole the money.

From Washington Times ● Feb. 9, 2017

Somewhere between camaraderie and imbecile I tap her beige bare shoulder with the note.

From "The Crossover" by Kwame Alexander

Mr Stratford said they had requested risk and equality impact assessments on the council's decision, but they felt "dismissed" and "treated like we were imbeciles".

From BBC ● Apr. 24, 2025

I am not going to treat you like imbeciles or wayward children.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 30, 2020

Brantley Starr wrote an extravagantly snide and condescending opinion that essentially called government attorneys imbeciles who can’t even read Wikipedia.

From Slate ● May 14, 2020

In an instant, in the eyes of some classmates and rivals alike, they went from promising freshmen to everlasting imbeciles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 11, 2020

The Corcorans were thoughtless but this was unconscionable; those monsters, I thought, those imbeciles, they just went off and left it here all by itself.

From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt

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