Idiotize

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. to lead someone into a state of foolishness and irrationality to alter a person's mindset so they exhibit poor judgment and illogical behavior to drive an individual towards actions that demonstrate a lack of intelligence and common sense
2. Cause a person to act in a manner lacking sense or intelligence
3. Influence someone so they show diminished reasoning and poor decision-making

Etymology: "Idiotize" is simply "idiot" with the suffix "-ize," which turns a noun into a verb meaning to make or treat something in a particular way. The base word "idiot" traces back through Latin "idiota," meaning a private person or layman, to Greek "idiōtēs," a person who was not a professional or expert. Over centuries that sense of ordinary, untrained person narrowed into a judgment on someone's mental capacity, and "idiot" came to mean a foolish person. The suffix "-ize," borrowed through Latin and Greek, has been attached to English nouns and adjectives for centuries to form verbs of making or causing, so "idiotize" follows the same pattern as words like "computerize" or "modernize." The result describes the act of making someone behave foolishly or without sense, the verb turning a name for a person into an action performed on another.

Synonyms: fool, dull, stupidify