Lowbrows

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who tends to prefer or engage in simpler, less sophisticated forms of entertainment or culture
2. Someone who lacks interest in or appreciation for high art and intellectual pursuits
3. An individual characterized by a preference for popular rather than refined cultural experiences

Etymology: "Lowbrows" is the plural of "lowbrow," and the singular is the more revealing form. It is an American coinage, first recorded around 1902, and it borrows its imagery from phrenology, the nineteenth-century science that claimed a person's character could be read from the shape of their skull. Phrenologists believed that people of low intelligence and refinement had a lower brow-line than those of greater sophistication, so "low" and "brow" together gave a physical picture of a lesser mind. Phrenology was later discredited, but the metaphor survived it. The word kept the sense of a mind judged by its forehead, now applied to tastes rather than skulls. Because it is a bahuvrihi compound, built from "low" and "brow" to describe a person who has those qualities, it reads as a single image: someone whose brow sits low, and by implication whose interests do too.

Synonyms: ignoramus, dullard, simpleton, boor, vulgarian

Antonyms: intellectual, sophisticate, genius, scholar, enlightened