dumb.
Unable to speak; lacking power of speech.
Meaning & usage
Unable to speak; lacking power of speech.
deaf, dumb, and blind
His younger brother was born dumb, and communicated with sign language.
Not talkative; taciturn or unwilling to speak.
Having no input or voice in running things.
Unaccompanied by words or speech, silent, wordless.
dumb show
Not producing any sound, silent.
Stupid.
You are so dumb! You don't even know how to make toast!
Pointless, foolish, lacking intellectual content or value.
This is dumb! We're driving in circles! We should have asked for directions an hour ago!
Brendan had the dumb job of moving boxes from one conveyor belt to another.
Lacking some functionality or property ordinarily characteristic of its kind.
Not equipped with intelligent behavior or processing capabilities of its own.
Lacking brightness or clearness as a colour; dim, dull.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English dumb (“silent, speechless, mute, ineffectual”), from Old English dumb (“silent, speechless, mute, unable to speak”), from Proto-West Germanic *dumb, from Proto-Germanic *dumbaz (“dull, dumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ- (“to whisk, smoke, darken, obscure”). The senses of stupid, unintellectual, and pointless, which are found regularly since the 19th century only, probably developed under the influence of German dumm and Dutch dom. Just like the English word, these originally meant "lacking the power of speech", but they developed the mentioned senses early on. Cognates Cognate with Scots dumb (“dumb, silent”), North Frisian dom, domme (“dumb, stupid”), West Frisian dom (“dumb, stupid”), Dutch dom (“dumb, stupid”), German dumm (“dumb, stupid”), Danish dum (“stupid”), Swedish dum (“stupid”), Icelandic dumbur (“dumb, mute”). See also deaf.
To silence.
To make stupid.
To represent as stupid.
To reduce the intellectual demands of.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English dumben, from Old English *dumbian (found in the compound ādumbian (“to become mute or dumb; keep silence; hold one’s peace”)), from Proto-Germanic *dumbijaną, *dumbōną (“to be silent, become dumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ- (“to whisk, smoke, darken, obscure”). Cognate with German verdummen (“to become dumb”).
Very, extremely.
Where this word comes from
A minced oath of damn.
An intensifier expressing contempt; damn, damned.
Where this word comes from
A minced oath of damn.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.