Stupid

I've long wondered if the words "stupid" and "stooped" were related. Perhaps "stupid" was derived from the adjective "stooped" - as if, in 1300s England, someone decided that a handy personification of someone likely to come up with bad ideas was someone who was bent over, eyes-averted, perhaps shuffling, low-class, etc.. "Young master Chowderhead's comments are stooped and infirm." And then "stupid" became a spelling variant of "stooped", etc..

Today, I finally looked it up.

stupid (adj.)

1540s, "mentally slow, lacking ordinary activity of mind, dull, inane," from Middle French stupide (16c.) and directly from Latin stupidus "amazed, confounded; dull, foolish," literally "struck senseless," from stupere "be stunned, amazed, confounded," from PIE *stupe- "hit," from root *(s)teu- (1) "to push, stick, knock, beat" (see steep (adj.)). Related: Stupidly; stupidness.

And:

stoop (v.)
"bend forward," Old English stupian "to bow, bend," from Proto-Germanic *stup- (source also of Middle Dutch stupen "to bow, bend," Norwegian stupa "fall, drop"), from PIE *(s)teu- (1) "to push, stick, knock, beat" (see steep (adj.)).

PIE being Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed root language of most European and many central Asian languages.

So, the relationship between "stupid" and "stooped" isn't a bit of middle-English wordplay. They are actually both derived, separately, through two different languages, from a word that meant to be beaten or hit. And they've preserved the sound of that original word for five thousand years.

One thought on “Stupid

  1. HinTN

    Five thousand fucking years and all that similarity/ divergence, too. Damn that’s good.

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