More on "Moron"

Anonymous asks:

How long has "oxymoron" been a word? What, if anything, does it have to do with the name someone is given when displaying foolish behavior?

A good question with an interesting answer. I assume you are wondering about any relationship to the word moron. There is only a coincidental connection.

Oxymoron, according to Wikipedia, comes from Greek oxy, meaning sharp, and moros, meaning dull. So, literally, it means sharp-dull: Oxymoron is itself an oxymoron.

The word moron is pretty interesting too. We think of it as a crude, insulting term, but it was coined by psychologist Henry H. Goddard as a technical term for people with a mental age between 8 and 12 on the Binet scale, or for people with an IQ between 51-70. It is also derived from the Greek word meaning dull, for obvious reasons.

Interestingly, along with moron, imbecile and idiot were once professionally acceptable terms for the mentally handicapped. All have been demoted to detrimental slang.

And for the record, oxymoron is a really old word. It has existed in its English form since at least 1640, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It is almost exactly the same word that was used in Classical Greece, which means it was coined no later than the 4th Century BC. Clearly it came well before Goddard coined moron early in the 20th Century.