mattoid

Forms of mattoid

Origin of mattoid

From Italian matto (“insane”) + -oid (“likeness or resemblance”), from Ancient Greek εἶδος (eîdos, “form”) more First appeared in English in 1891 through a translation of the nineteenth-century Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso's work, Man of Genius. H G Wells used it in several of his books, most notably in Mankind in the Making of 1903, in which he derides the theories of Lombroso and the Victorian phrenologists: “Among such theorists none at present are in quite such urgent need of polemical suppression as those who would persuade the heedless general reader that every social failure is necessarily a ‘degenerate’, and who claim boldly that they can trace a distinctly evil and mischievous strain in that unfortunate miscellany which constitutes ‘the criminal class’... These mattoid scientists make a direct and disastrous attack upon the latent self-respect of criminals.”

Questions about mattoid

What does mattoid mean?

Mattoid means displaying erratic behaviour.

What part of speech is mattoid?

Mattoid can be an adjective or a noun.