village idiot
village idiot noun: a person widely known in their community for their stupidity and mental deficiency.
Noun
village idiot (plural village idiots)
- A person widely known in their community for their stupidity and mental deficiency.
- It is true that the Doocot was occasionally appropriated to other purposes than that of a tolbooth for the sorner, the drunken gipsy, the village idiot at the change of the moon, the swearing bluegown, and the contumacious birdnester on the sabbath; […]1825, The Abduction; Or, the Adventures of Major Sarney: A Story of the Times of Charles the Second, volume II, Charles Knight, page 170
- "So kindly keep the vainglorious enumeration of your pots for the benefit of those village idiots who compose your particular set of boozing companions."1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 85
Forms of village idiot
| plural | village idiots |
|---|
Origin of village idiot
From the saying “Every village has its village idiot”, alleged to be an old Yiddish proverb.
Questions about village idiot
- What does village idiot mean?
- Village idiot means a person widely known in their community for their stupidity and mental deficiency.
- What part of speech is village idiot?
- Village idiot is a noun.
- What is the plural of village idiot?
- The plural of village idiot is village idiots.
Words near village idiot in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: village idiot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “village idiot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/village_idiot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.