Idiot vs Nincompoop - What's the difference?
idiot | nincompoop |
(pejorative) A person of low general intelligence.
(obsolete, medicine, psychology) A person who lacks the capacity to develop beyond the mental age of a normal four-year-old.
A silly or foolish person.
* {{quote-book
, year=1680
, author=Matthew Stevenson
, title=The wits paraphras'd: or, Paraphrase upon paraphrase: In a burlesque on the several late translations of Ovids Epistles ...
I sleep, and he begins to droop.
He sees, yet keeps his Eyes a winking,
Says nought, but pays it off with thinking. }}* {{quote-book
, year=1694
, author=Thomas D'Urfey
, title=The Comical History of Don Quixote: As it was Acted at the Queen's Theatre in Dorset-Garden ...
, chapter=Part I, Act I, Scene I
* 1905: Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-pubeng?specfile=/texts/english/modeng/publicsearch/modengpub.o2w&act=surround&offset=507211157&tag=Orczy,+Baroness:+The+Scarlet+Pimpernel,+1905&query=+nincompoop&id=OrcPimp]
As nouns the difference between idiot and nincompoop
is that idiot is (slang|derogatory) a proponent of intelligent design while nincompoop is a silly or foolish person.idiot
English
Alternative forms
* eejit * idjit, idget (eye dialect)Noun
(en noun)- usage note This may be used pejoratively, as an insult. It is a weak insult, however, and between close friends, family members, or lovers, is often completely nonaggressive.
Synonyms
* See alsoAntonyms
* geniusnincompoop
English
Noun
(en noun)citation, page=161 , passage=Tis such another Nincompoop ,
I sleep, and he begins to droop.
He sees, yet keeps his Eyes a winking,
Says nought, but pays it off with thinking. }}
citation, page=6 , passage=...Heaven knows the time when? Art not thou asham’d to see me, thou Nincompoop ? }}
- No wonder that Chauvelin's spies had failed to detect, in the apparently brainless nincompoop , the man whose reckless daring and resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest French spies...