Nincompoop vs Cretin - What's the difference?
nincompoop | cretin | Synonyms |
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]
(pathology) A person who fails to develop mentally and physically due to a congenital hypothyroidism.
(pejorative) An idiot.
* 1969 , Irving Wallace, The Seven Minutes
Nincompoop is a synonym of cretin.
As nouns the difference between nincompoop and cretin
is that nincompoop is a silly or foolish person while cretin is idiot, fool, bastard, fuckwit etc.As an adjective cretin is
stupid; idiotic; foolish etc.nincompoop
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...
Derived terms
* nincompooperySynonyms
* (foolish person) dunderhead, fop, fool, imbecile, fuckwit * See alsocretin
English
Noun
(en noun)- When I challenged the symbolism, tried to make the professor consider the book as a piece of realism, he regarded me as if I were an absolute cretin . He got very supercilious and condescending
