“
Idiot
.
Who is weak, without vigor.
Children under seven, old people at eighty, are at an imbecile age.
"You don't have to be a great scholar to guess that the word shouldn't have quite the same meaning as it does today ... Who would dare, in fact, to treat, in the 21st century, and even long before, an elderly person? '
fool
because of his age?
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However, to continue reading the article that Furetière devoted in 1690 to the word
imbécile
, then spelled imbecille, is to be even more scandalized if one sticks to the current meaning of the adjective.
What does Furetière add?
"
Women are also called idiotic sex
"!
What is the origin of the word imbecile?
We recognized there, in fact, the synonym of the weaker sex, a formulation, admittedly, already debatable.
In fact, the very origin of the word
imbecile
allows us to understand this first meaning: the classical Latin
imbecilius
, constructed with the private prefix
im
(without) and the radical baculum (stick), literally "the one
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