we like to make fun of each other/and the attack of one’s lack of intelligence or sense/is rife

but our vocabulary arsenal is inexact

we could say ‘foolish’/which means ‘similar to a fool/but that really means ‘similar to one/who is easily fooled’/which misses the mark

(sidebar: for a terrific fairy tale written and illustrated by Howard Pyle, find “How Boots Befool’d the King” in his classic The Wonder Clock)

then there’s ‘idiotic’/which is ‘of or like an idiot’ but some do not know that ‘idiot’  was once a legal and medical term/referring to one whose mental development is deemed to be that of a two-year old or worse

(sidebar: the poet John Ciardi made fun of William Wordsworth’s “The Idiot Boy” in his ambitious, explicative How Does a Poem Mean?)

(sidebar: i must read Fyodor Dostoevski’s The Idiot) before I die)

and ‘moron’ and ‘imbecile’ had similar journeys

(sidebar: i still laugh at thinking of that alt-right protester holding up a sign saying YOU MORANS)

(sidebar: Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who believed in eugenics, wrote the majority opinion for Buck v. Bell, which was about mandatory sterilization of the ‘feeble-minded,’ and includes these exact w.ords: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” That was less than 100 years ago)

ss for stupid/it should mean ‘in a state of stupefaction’/which is a sort of paralysis/brought on by an unexpected event

but to continue splitting hairs like this/is stoopid