
“Still I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain (what I consider the most enviable of all titles) the character of an honest man.” — George Washington, 1788
Earlier this week, when I was preparing the essay titled “Ignorance, Incompetence and Impostors,” I came across another couple of ‘I’ words related to the topic: idiot and imbecile.
Now, we know these two words as invectives hurled at people whom we think exhibit some sort of temporary stupidity. “You imbecile!” or “What an idiot!” are phrases we've all heard before.
But there’s a history to these words—a history that isn’t widely remembered anymore. It’s medical in nature.
When you consider the spectrum of intelligence as typically measured by IQ scores, you see the standard bell curve with a distribution. The middle portion of the curve (the “bell”) includes those who are considered average. To the left of the peak is below aver…
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