_The r-word_ (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Baker, John]

"Idiot savant" seems to have been pretty much replaced by just plain "savant," a meaning reflected in the current entries for "savant" in AHD5 and M-W, but not yet in OED.  I have to say that this is an example of political correctness that I have no problem with, notwithstanding the reversal in the original meaning of "savant."  Not only is "idiot" offensive, but savants typically are not idiots in the old technical sense (i.e., they rarely suffer from extremely severe mental retardation).  Wikipedia says that "autistic savant" has been suggested as an alternative, but many savants are not autistic.  Anyway, who uses savant in the old sense?  I haven't seen it used that way since Doyle's 1912 novel, The Lost World, and the very fact that I remember its use then shows how rare it was.


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 9:18 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: _The r-word_ (UNCLASSIFIED)

Phil Donahue had a show about idiot-savants (as even a psychologist and the
super-diplomatic Donahue called them) close to twenty years ago.

One did the math stuff, one could recall the weather on each day of his
life,  another could play a complex neoclassical piano concerto after
hearing the composer play it once live on TV, and one could whittle
incredibly realistic animals from  block of woof while the others were
doing the above.

The theory is/was that the savants' condition enables/compels them to focus
almost all of their attention on one extremely narrow galaxy of
information, like math and musical relationships or the weather.  It wasn't
clear to me whether their memory for ordinary things is impaired.

JL

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