imbecile: [16] Etymologically imbecile means ‘without support’, hence ‘weak’. It came via French from Latin imbēcillus, a compound adjective formed from the prefix in- ‘not’ and an unrecorded *bēcillum, a diminutive variant of baculum ‘stick’ (from which English gets bacillus and bacterium). Anyone or anything without a stick or staff for support is by extension weak, and so the Latin adjective came to mean ‘weak, feeble’. This broadened out to ‘weak in mind’, and was even used as a noun for ‘weak-minded person’, but English did not adopt these metaphorical uses until the late 18th century. => bacillus, bacterium
imbecile (adj.)
1540s, imbecille "weak, feeble" (especially in reference to the body), from Middle French imbecile (15c.), from Latin imbecillus "weak, feeble" (see imbecility). Sense shifted to mental weakness from mid-18c. (compare frail, which in provincial English also could mean "mentally weak"). As a noun, "feeble-minded person," it is attested from 1802. Traditionally an adult with a mental age of roughly 6 to 9 (above an idiot but beneath a moron).
实用例句
1. It was an imbecile thing to do.
这么做很愚蠢。
来自柯林斯例句
2. For two years that imbecile threw his money away like this.
两年来那个傻瓜就像这样挥霍钱财.
来自《简明英汉词典》
3. Did you ever see anything so imbecile as her mother?
象她母亲那样无用的人,你说少见不少见?
来自辞典例句
4. He was an imbecile to sign a contract with them.
他跟他们签合同,真是愚不可及.
来自辞典例句
5. I've very good mind to shake you severely, for your contemptible treachery, and your imbecile conceit.
