dumb
Meanings
- Unable to speak; lacking power of speech.
- Not talkative; taciturn or unwilling to speak.
- Having no input or voice in running things.
- Unaccompanied by words or speech, silent, wordless.
- Not producing any sound, silent.
- Stupid.
- Pointless, foolish, lacking intellectual content or value.
- Lacking some functionality or property ordinarily characteristic of its kind.
- Not equipped with intelligent behavior or processing capabilities of its own.
- Lacking brightness or clearness as a colour; dim, dull.
- To silence.
- To make stupid.
- To represent as stupid.
- To reduce the intellectual demands of.
- Very, extremely.
- An intensifier expressing contempt; damn, damned.
- Alternative form of D.U.M.B. (deep underground military base)
- An acronym for remembering desirable characteristics for goal-setting: dream-driven, uplifting, method-driven, behavior-driven.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English dumb (“silent, speechless, mute, ineffectual”), from Old English dumb (“silent, speechless, mute, unable to speak”), from Proto-West Germanic *dumb, from Proto-Germanic *dumbaz (“dull, dumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ- (“to whisk, smoke, darken, obscure”). The senses of stupid, unintellectual, and pointless, which are found regularly since the 19th century only, probably developed under the influence of German dumm and Dutch dom. Just like the English word, these originally meant "lacking the power of speech", but they developed the mentioned senses early on. Cognates Cognate with Scots dumb (“dumb, silent”), North Frisian dom, domme (“dumb, stupid”), West Frisian dom (“dumb, stupid”), Dutch dom (“dumb, stupid”), German dumm (“dumb, stupid”), Danish dum (“stupid”), Swedish dum (“stupid”), Icelandic dumbur (“dumb, mute”). See also deaf.