imbecile

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

"They were called lunatics and imbeciles, idiots. The terms dementia or schizophrenia weren't known. Psychiatry was an infant science"

From BBC

When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" in a Supreme Court ruling upholding Virginia's involuntary sterilization law, he was describing a poor White woman with no mental impairment.

From Salon

Bell, the Supreme Court upheld the right to sterilize a “feeble-minded” woman who had been committed to a state mental institution, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes infamously writing, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

From New York Times

“An individual member may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark — that is critical genius.”

From Washington Post

After he published his Jan. 8 video calling for people to kill their senators, right-wing commenters called him an “imbecile” and asked if he had lost his mind.

From New York Times