imbecility

Noun

imbecility (countable and uncountable, plural imbecilities)

1. (uncountable) The quality of being imbecile; weakness; feebleness, especially of mind.
   • The police prosecutor hammered at him and the bench had a go at him, and they commanded from him such a madhouse particularity between the distinctions of looking and seeing that Bradly was reduced to imbecility, and so contradictious were his mutterings that he was openly suspected of trying to...1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 89
   • He [Ben Shapiro] wielded a particularly pointed arrow at Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, for engaging in what he said was “an act of moral imbecility,” by recently airing a softball interview with Nick Fuentes, an avowed antisemite.2025 December 20, Richard Fausset, Ken Bensinger, quoting Ben Shapiro, “Turning Point’s Annual Gathering Turns Into a Gripefest”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company...
2. Something imbecilic; a stupid action, behaviour, etc.
   • The Parnassian theory of art is mere imbecility.1895, Degeneration, New York: D. Appleton and Company, translation of Entartung by Max Simon Nordau, page 270
   • The procedure of musical comedy is not reducible to a coherent formula, so that its imbecilities may be annotated by super imbecilities.1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 37