Has the word "dumb" been accepted to mean...

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..."stupid"?
A PSA telling people not to misuse the word "gay" and this women uses the word "dumb" to mean "stupid".
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS0GVOQPs0[/youtube]

Dumb as a pejorative meaning "stupid" is not the same as dumb meaning "silent." Both uses of the word are several hundred years old.

They do share a similar linguistic origin, but there is no implication in English that a "dumb" person - a stupid person - is a "dumb" person - someone who cannot speak, or the other way round.

It's been accepted to mean that for a very long time.

Can't you say the same for gay meaning "stupid" or "boring"?

I always thought dumb and stupid meant the same thing. Same as idiot.

It's like how in a lot of places, especially Massachusetts, a ret*d is not meant to mean a person with mental retardation, but rather a fully functional person who does stupid things. Some people don't take it as such. I refer to a mentally ret*d person as a person with [insert specific disability or condition here]. I use ret*d in place of dumb.

I have to be careful when I use the R word because some people are too sensitive.

I got in trouble my first week on here because of it.

Uh oh.

There was a time, when dumb meant mute. It's also meant stupid, for many years. Maybe a couple of centuries.

Not so far as I understand it, no. Someone saying "that's dumb" would not at any time have meant "that's stupid, like one of those people who can't speak are stupid." The words came from the same initial root, but the pejorative sense is not directly descended from the descriptive.

Someone saying "that's gay", on the other hand, would have meant "that's bad, like one of those gay people are bad." The pejorative sense for this one is directly descended from the descriptive. Whatever people use it to mean, its origin is fundamentally a slur, and that's not the case for dumb.

The problem here is that the medical community has not retired the word "ret*d". You may be using it in place of "dumb", but the medical community is using it right now, on peoples' medical records, to mean "scored below 70 on an IQ test". Until they stop using it that way, you should stop using it as an insult.

I must admit to being really bothered by people saying "thats so gay..."

Some of my best friends I have ever had have been gay. I can think of one instance where a gay woman was my confidante, and I had a male gay best friend when overseas.. he is still a good friend now.

I hate it when people say "gay". Or "ret*d". Not only does it make you sound bigoted, it makes you sound class-less. Like you're a South Park character or something.

Dumb could also mean clueless, hence - The dumb blond.

Well, I guess it depends on what the society take the meaning to be right?