stupid, n.

[Dan Goncharoff]

What about "Stupid is as stupid does" from "Forrest Gump" by Winston Groom?
I don't know if it was in the book (1986), but it was in the movie (1994).

DanG


On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 10:17 PM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: stupid, n.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> >
> > On Jul 1, 2012, at 10:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Another adj. > n.
> > >
> > > HBO's _The Newsroom_ last Sunday had a journalist explain in
> frustration
> > > that the mission of the Fourth Estate has become "to tell truth to
> > > stupid."
> >
> > Didn't the "I'm with Stupid" t-shirts cover this ground a while ago?
>
> Not exactly -- "I'm with stupid" is of a piece with "stupid" = 'stupid
> person', in OED from 1712 (often vocatively, as in the "It's the
> economy, stupid"). Perhaps more relevant here is "stuck on stupid",
> which we've discussed before (dates back to 1990):
>
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0609A&L=ADS-L&P=R1952&I=-3
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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