Moral Cretin

Imbecile ex Wiki
For the common or slang use of imbecile, see Idiot.
Imbecile was a medical category of people with moderate to severe intellectual disability, as well as a type of criminal.^[1]^[2] The term arises from the Latin word imbecillus, meaning weak, or weak-minded. It included people with an IQ of 26–50, between "idiot" (IQ of 0–25) and "moron" (IQ of 51–70).^[3]

The meaning was further refined into mental and moral imbecility.^[4]^[5] The concepts of "moral insanity", "moral idiocy"," and "moral imbecility", led to the emerging field of eugenic criminology, which held that crime can be reduced by preventing "feeble-minded" people from reproducing.^[6]^[7]

The concept is closely associated with psychology, psychiatry, criminology, and eugenics. However, the term imbecile quickly passed into vernacular usage as a derogatory term, and fell out of professional use in the 20th century^[10] in favor of mental retardation..

In recent decades, the phrases "mental retardation", "mentally retarded", and "retarded" initially used in a medical manner, are regarded as derogatory and politically incorrect much like moron, imbecile, cretin, dolt and idiot, formerly used as scientific terms in the early 20th century. On October 5, 2010, President of the United States Barack Obama signed Senate Bill 2781, known as "Rosa's Law", which changed references in many Federal statutes that referred to "mental retardation" to refer instead to "intellectual disability".^[11]

There are three antonyms of euphemism: dysphemism, cacophemism, and loaded language. Dysphemism can be either offensive or merely ironic; cacophemism is deliberately offensive. Loaded language evokes a visceral response beyond the meaning of the words.

Etymology
Euphemism comes from the Greek word εὐφημία (euphemia), meaning "the use of words of good omen", which in turn is derived from the Greek root-words eû (εὖ), "good, well" and phḗmē (φήμη) "prophetic speech; rumour, talk".^[3] Etymologically, the eupheme is the opposite of the blaspheme "evil-speaking." The term euphemism itself was used as a euphemism by the ancient Greeks, meaning "to keep a holy silence" (speaking well by not speaking at all).^[4]

Purpose
Euphemism use ranges from a polite concern for propriety, to attempting to escape responsibility for war crimes. For instance one reason for the comparative scarcity of written evidence documenting the exterminations at Auschwitz (at least given the scale) is "directives for the extermination process obscured in bureaucratic euphemisms."^[5] Columnist David Brooks called the euphemisms for torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and elsewhere an effort to "dull the moral sensibility."^[6]

There is some disagreement over whether certain terms are or are not euphemisms. For example, sometimes the phrase visually impaired is labeled as a politically correct euphemism for blind. However, visual impairment can be a broader term, including, for example, people who have partial sight in one eye, those with uncorrectable mild to moderate poor vision, or even those who wear glasses, a group that would be excluded by the word blind.

To alter the pronunciation or spelling of a taboo word (such as a swear word) to form a euphemism is known as taboo deformation, or "minced oath". In American English, words that are unacceptable on television such as fuck, may be represented by deformations such as freak, even in children's cartoons.^[7] Some examples of rhyming slang may serve the same purpose: to call a person a berk sounds less offensive than to call a person a cunt, though berk is short for Berkeley Hunt, which rhymes with cunt.^[8]

Bureaucracies frequently spawn euphemisms of a more deliberate nature, doublespeak expressions. For example, in the past the US military called contamination by radioactive isotopes sunshine units.^[9] A practical death sentence in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge often used the clause "imprisonment without right to correspondence:" the person sentenced never had a chance to correspond because soon after imprisonment he would be shot.^[10] As early as 1939, Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich used the term Sonderbehandlung (translated into English as "special treatment") to mean summary execution, most likely by hanging, of persons who proved 'disciplinary problems' to the Nazis even before the Nazis began the systematic extermination of the Jews. Heinrich Himmler, aware that the word had come to be known to mean murder, replaced that euphemism with one in which Jews would be "guided" (to their deaths) through the slave-labor and extermination camps^[11] after having been "evacuated" to their doom. Such was part of the superficially innocuous formulation Endlösung der Judenfrage (the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"), which became infamous to the entire world during the Nuremberg Trials.^[12]

A euphemism may often devolve into a taboo word itself, through the linguistic process known as pejoration or semantic change described by W.V.O. Quine,^[13] and more recently dubbed the "euphemism treadmill" by Harvard professor Steven Pinker.^[14] For instance, Toilet is an 18th-century euphemism, replacing the older euphemism House-of-Office, which in turn replaced the even older euphemisms privy-house or bog-house.^[15] In the 20th century, where the words lavatory or toilet were deemed inappropriate (e.g. in the United States), they were sometimes replaced with bathroom or water closet, which in turn became restroom, W.C., or washroom.

The word "shit" appears to have originally been a euphemism for defecation in Pre-Germanic, as the Proto-Indo-European root *skined-, from which it was derived, meant to cut off.^[16]

Common examples

Euphemism	Basic word(s) for which substituted
adult entertainment, adult material	pornography
affirmative action	preference for minorities, usually in employment or academic admissions, also called reverse discrimination, or in the U.K. positive discrimination.^[17]
custodian, caretaker	janitor (also originally a euphemism: in Latin, janitor means doorman.)
challenged, differently abled	disabled
enhanced interrogation	torture^[18]
expecting	pregnant
family planning	contraceptives
making love, sleeping with, getting it on, having it off (U.K.), hooking up, doing it	having sexual intercourse;
sanitation worker, refuse worker (UK)	bin man, garbage man, dustman (UK)
underprivileged, economically disadvantaged	poor^[19]
passed away	died
put to sleep	euthanized
visit from the stork	give birth

Main article: Doublespeak
Doublespeak is a term sometimes used for deliberate euphemistic misuse of incorrect words to disguise unacceptable meaning, as in a "Ministry of Peace" which wages war, a "Ministry of Love" which imprisons and tortures. It is a portmanteau of the terms "newspeak" and "doublethink", which originate from George Orwell's novel 1984.

The "Dead Parrot sketch" from Monty Python's Flying Circus contains an extensive list of euphemisms for death, referring to the deceased parrot that the character played by John Cleese had purchased.

The word euphemism itself can be used as a euphemism. In the animated TV special Halloween Is Grinch Night (See Dr. Seuss), a child asks to go to the euphemism, where euphemism is being used as a euphemism for outhouse. This euphemistic use of "euphemism" also occurred in the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? where a character requests, "Martha, will you show her where we keep the, uh, euphemism?"

Idiot ex Wiki
An idiot, dolt, dullard or (archaically) mome is a person perceived to be lacking intelligence, or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way. Along with the similar terms moron, imbecile, and cretin, the word archaically referred to the intellectually disabled, but have all since gained specialized meanings in modern times. An idiot is said to be idiotic, and to suffer from idiocy. A dunce is an idiot who is specifically incapable of learning. An idiot differs from a fool (who is unwise) and an ignoramus (who is uneducated/an ignorant), neither of which refers to someone with low intelligence. In modern English usage, the terms "idiot" and "idiocy" describe an extreme folly or stupidity, and its symptoms (foolish or stupid utterance or deed). In psychology, it is a historical term for the state or condition now called profound intellectual disability.

Moron ex Wiki
Moron is a term once used in psychology to denote mild intellectual disability.^[1] The term was closely tied with the American eugenics movement.^[2] Once the term became popularized, it fell out of use by the psychological community, as it was used more commonly as an insult than as a psychological term.

Moral Cretin

Common examples

See also