stupid
Americanadjective
-
lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; slow-witted.
-
characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless.
Sorry for asking a stupid question, but why is the answer four instead of five?
-
tediously boring, especially due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless.
He wished he'd never come to such a stupid party.
-
annoying or irritating; troublesome.
Turn off that stupid radio.
-
in a state of stupor; stupefied.
After a twelve-hour work day, she was stupid from fatigue.
noun
adjective
-
lacking in common sense, perception, or normal intelligence
-
(usually postpositive) stunned, dazed, or stupefied
stupid from lack of sleep
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having dull mental responses; slow-witted
-
trivial, silly, or frivolous
noun
Usage
What are other ways to say stupid? The adjective stupid describes things characterized or proceeding from mental dullness. Do you know when to use stupid, fatuous, silly, inane, foolish, and asinine? Find out on Thesaurus.com.
Commonly Confused
Stupid, ignorant, and unintelligent are all used to refer to people or things that seem to show a lack of mental resources. Stupid is the most general and most insulting term, and can describe someone lacking in intelligence, wisdom, prudence, or mental quickness. Unintelligent refers to people or things that are lacking in capacity for learning, reasoning, or understanding. Ignorant, by contrast, generally means lacking in knowledge (not necessarily lacking in intelligence).
Synonym Usage
See dull.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of stupid
First recorded in 1535–45; from Latin stupidus, equivalent to stup(ēre) “to be numb, to be stunned” + -idus -id 4 ( def. )
Explanation
A stupid person doesn’t have much intelligence or imagination, and they go through life making decisions that seem to lack all common sense. If you’ve got a brain but you don’t use it, you might be a bit stupid. The word comes from a Latin adjective that means “amazed or stunned,” and stupid people are stunned by everything because their minds are numb. You can make a stupid mistake when you’re not thinking, and you can call someone stupid if you’re feeling cruel, like “Hey, Stupid.” Zombies are stupid because their brains are dead. If that makes sense to you, then you’re not stupid, and you’re also not a zombie. Well done!
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"Maybe this is actually stupid, but I don't think it was a big decision for us," says Maskin.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
But no editor in the world could recut something like “Gail Daughtry” into a two-minute preview that accurately conveys just how joyous and stupid this film is.
From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026
To adapt a line from the political strategist James Carville: It’s the phones, stupid!
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
I mean, you have to be really smart to make a movie this stupid.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2026
Hope for Children was a stupid name, but he was relieved, somehow, that it wasn’t the Happy Family Adoption Agency, the same one that Chip’s family had dealt with.
From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
“I was a bit stupider back then,” he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026
Other news reports more definitively declared that, yes, ChatGPT is becoming stupider.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 2, 2023
Otherwise, the whole room gets stupider and stupider.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 20, 2023
What could he say: I thought up an even stupider conspiracy than yours, and even though I can’t prove it’s true, I’m still afraid it will kill you?
From Slate ● Sep. 24, 2022
Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
From "The Magician's Nephew" by C. S. Lewis
This is the stupidest thing I’ve done in recent memory.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 21, 2025
Some pundits might be calling it “the most important chart in the world,” Perkins said, but in reality, it is closer to “the stupidest chart in the world.”
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 6, 2025
That’s “completely bogus,” writes TS Lombard Managing Director Dario Perkins, who calls it “the stupidest chart in the world.”
From Barron's ● Nov. 6, 2025
That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025
Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader.
From "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
