I can picture the word idiot like a slinky descending the stairs.

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The word’s roots were Greek, then Latin, then it was French, then it was English.  By the time it arrived in English in 1300 it had already split into two meanings both close to what we recognize now, but not quite the same.

Originally in Greek the word idiotes meant “a private person,” that is, just your average Joe.

Because your average Joe didn’t have a profession or specialized knowledge he was thought of as pretty ignorant.  So by the time the word turns up in Latin as idiota it has lost the “private person” connotation and remains just “ignorant” and “uneducated.”

When idiot arrived in English it still meant an uneducated, common person, and in this it sometimes didn’t even carry a pejorative sense—people were called idiots in the same way we might call someone a layman today.

But the word had also acquired a new meaning, one that we may still have some historical sense of. This meaning evolved into a sort of a legal/medical definition about the strength of the idiot’s mind.

Today the word is generally applied to people who we think are making stupid decisions.

Idiot has long played a part in political opinions.

When I first looked at this word George W. Bush was in office and at the time Urbandictionary’s most popular definition for idiot cast the word as a synonym for Bush. But Mark Twain makes it clear that politicians of 100 years ago were also seen as idiots.

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

A connection between idiots and politics may go back to ancient Greece. There is a sort of legend that says the Greeks were required to vote in their early democracy and that someone who didn’t vote was termed an idiot for thinking their private interests trumped the good of society.

In fact not all Greeks voted. Women and slaves couldn’t vote and the original idiots floated somewhere above slaves and below the ruling and voting classes. They were private individuals.

This “private” meaning of the Greek root also shows up in another English word familiar to word lovers; idiom.

An idiom is a phrase or saying that usually holds a special meaning different than what the words themselves might imply. For example to lose your marbles means to “go insane.”  This has a “private” meaning to speakers of English and that’s where the name idiom comes from.