Idiocy

‚A most terrible thing has happened. The King of Yugoslavia has been assassinated.’ ‘Oh, dear!’ she replied. ‘Did you know him?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Then why,’ she asked, ‘do you think it’s so terrible?’

Her question made me remember that the word ‘idiot’ comes from a Greek root meaning private person.

—Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, (London: Penguin Books, 1982), 2.