lack-wit

English

Noun

lack-wit (plural lack-wits)

1. Alternative form of lackwit
   • 1994, Karen Cushman, Catherine, Called Birdy, page 5:

     Now my father, the toad, conspires to sell me like a cheese to some lack-wit seeking a wife.

   • 2004, Dewey Lambdin, Havoc's Sword:

     “I'll not be treated like a lack-wit, too dumb t'pee on my own, either,” Lewrie rejoined.

   • 2011, Lisa Plumley, Outlaw:

     Fully aware that he probably sounded a lack-wit, and caring not in the least, Mason looked from the paper to Amy's face.

Adjective

lack-wit (comparative more lack-wit, superlative most lack-wit)

1. Alternative form of lackwit
   • 1821, The Letters of Julius, page 23:

     With these lack-wit disseminators of disaffection the hardihood of guilt is a contradiction in terms ; and venturing the chance, which involves but a small degree of additional degradation in the one event, and the possible consequences of the moral or physical exertions of enlisted faction and party in the other, a probability worthy only the suppositions of lunacy.

   • 2007, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, The Well of Tears:

     Now neither of them was in range, but the lack-wit Gaspar yet stood gawping and goggling, like some burrowing rodent forcibly dragged into broad daylight.

   • 2009, Philippa Gregory, The White Queen:

     Dear God, Edward was so wrong. Not, thank God, about winning the battle; for that was the battle that they called Lose-coat Field, when the bare-footed fools fighting for a lack-wit king were in such a rush to run away that they dropped their weapons and even their coats to escape from the charge led by my husband who was fighting his way through them, to keep his promise to me, to come home in time to bring me peaches and samphire. No, he was wrong about the loyalty of Warwick and George his brother, who – it turned out – had planned and paid for the uprising and hadd decided this time to be certain of Edward's defeat.