Idiot

Depending on who you ask, all of us are idiots at some point in our lives. The term “idiot” is a catch-all word to describe someone considered to be of low intelligence or who has done something stupid. There are plenty of people out there who would classify some of the world’s most powerful politicians as idiots. But “idiots” was originally quite a specific term. In Ancient Greece, an “idiotes” was a private person and played no part in public life. The word came from “idios”, meaning personal, and later evolved in French to mean uneducated. It eventually took on its current meaning in English in the 17th century.