idiotism

English

Etymology 1

From idiot +‎ -ism.

Noun

idiotism (countable and uncountable, plural idiotisms)

1. (now chiefly historical) Very severe mental retardation.
   • 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Penguin 2004, p. 23:

     He did not perceive that regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem […].

   • 1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society 2016, p. 488:

     Idiotism had long been accepted as hopeless: ‘Absolute idiocy admits of no cure,’ noted the nineteenth-century psychiatrist George Man Burrows (1771–1846).

2. A foolish utterance.
   • 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard:

     […] that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl upon its lips.

Etymology 2

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin idiotismus.

Noun

idiotism (plural idiotisms)

1. Idiom.
2. An overly literal translation of an idiom.