| Comment | (somewhat off topic)
Sad and completely rude- these words that have completely integrated into our society and are considered acceptable today (from wikipedia):
Several traditional terms denoting varying degrees of mental deficiency long predate psychiatry, but have since been subject to the euphemism treadmill. In common usage they are simple forms of abuse. Their now-obsolete use as psychiatric technical definitions is of purely historical interest. They are often encountered in old documents such as books, academic papers, and census forms (for example, the British census of 1901 has a column heading including the terms imbecile and feeble-minded).
There have been some efforts made among mental health professionals to discourage use of these terms, but as long as intelligence is seen to contribute to social and financial success, children will use any term they believe to mean "unintelligent" as an insult. In addition to the terms below, the abbreviation retard or tard is still used as a generic insult, especially among children and teens. A BBC survey in 2003 ranked retard as the most offensive disability-related word, ahead of terms such as spastic (not considered offensive in America) and mong.[7]
* Cretin is the oldest and probably comes from an old French word for Christian. The implication was that people with significant intellectual or developmental disabilities were "still human" (or "still Christian") and deserved to be treated with basic human dignity. This term has not been used in any serious or scientific endeavor since the middle of the 20th century and is now always considered a term of abuse: notably, in the 1964 movie Becket (film), King Henry II calls his son and heir a "cretin." "Cretinism" is also used as an obsolescent term to refer to the condition of congenital hypothyroidism, in which there is some degree of mental retardation.
* Idiot indicated the greatest degree of intellectual disability, where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard himself or herself against common physical dangers. The term was gradually replaced by the term profound mental retardation.
* Imbecile indicated an intellectual disability less extreme than idiocy and not necessarily inherited. It is now usually subdivided into two categories, known as severe mental retardation and moderate mental retardation.
* Moron was defined by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded in 1910, following work by Henry H. Goddard, as the term for an adult with a mental age between eight and twelve; mild mental retardation is now the term for this condition. Alternative definitions of these terms based on IQ were also used. This group was known in UK law from 1911 to 1959/60 as "feeble-minded." |
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