Words of the day : "morons" v. "idiot".

I tend to use both words indiscriminately the words "moron" and "idiot" (see our latest post) but I just found out that there actually is a difference:
an idiot is a stupid person with a mental age below three years, while a moron is a stupid person with a mental age of between seven to twelve years. (Dictionary.com)

MORON (Wiki):

As it turns out, the term "moron" is originally a scientific term, from a Greek word meaning "foolish" and coined by psychologist Henry Goddard and used to describe a person with a genetically determined mental age between 8 and 12.

It actually applied to people with an IQ of 51-70
It was a step up from "imbecile" (IQ of 26-50).
And two steps up from "idiot" (IQ of 0-25)

So you're much better off as a "moron" than as an "imbecile" and you really don't want to be called an "idiot".

IDIOT (Wiki):
It is a word derived from the Greek meaning "layman," "person lacking professional skill," "a private citizen," "individual"). In Latin the word idiota ("ordinary person, layman") preceded the Late Latin meaning "uneducated or ignorant person."
Its modern meaning and form dates back to Middle English around the year 1300, from the Old French idiote ("uneducated or ignorant person"). The related word idiocy dates to 1487 and may have been analagously modeled on the words prophet and prophecy.

Don't you love those totally useless bits of information?