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imbecile[imbecile 词源字典]

imbecile: [16] Etymologically imbecile means ‘without support’, hence ‘weak’. It came via French from Latin imbēcillus, a compound adjective formed from the prefix in- ‘not’ and an unrecorded *bēcillum, a diminutive variant of baculum ‘stick’ (from which English gets bacillus and bacterium). Anyone or anything without a stick or staff for support is by extension weak, and so the Latin adjective came to mean ‘weak, feeble’. This broadened out to ‘weak in mind’, and was even used as a noun for ‘weak-minded person’, but English did not adopt these metaphorical uses until the late 18th century.
=> bacillus, bacterium[imbecile etymology, imbecile origin, 英语词源]