mouth breather
2
9.3
- noun
- /maʊθ ˈbriːðər/
- Offensive
:
idiota
- TPC, I know many doctors and have relatives who are doctors, and by far they are just as lazy, stupid, feckless, and greedy as the average mouth breather bouncing around on the bread and circus merry-go-round.
We are trained as security professionals to ignore mouth breathers.
- We are trained as security professionals to ignore mouth breathers.
Examples
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I've got a rotting fence post smarter than these mouth breathers.
Blog text (9) -
Listen, mouth breather, I am fully capable and really in the mood to kick the shit out of your psychotic, skulking ass.
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So I am a mouth breather when I sleep.
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Yeah, I think the the next thing that I I really want to talk about, and this is personal to me as a professional mouth breather, I am.
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Don't pick a mouth breather for president next time.
Blog text (25) -
Let the mouth breathers riot and burn down their "hoods" because there will always be room in a local FEMA camp for all the displaced losers out there.
Blog text (5) -
It is the mouth breather who really cares about what illiterate, drugged-out gangsters dressed up in football uniforms do.
Blog text (5) -
I said smallman mouth breathers, troglodytes, CRO magnons and slow movers.
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It's frustrating to deal with a mouth breather who can't keep up with the conversation.
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During the presentation, I realized that a few mouth breathers were not following the main points.
How Intelligent
Surface Forms
Morphology
mouth + breather
The compound literally combines 'mouth' and 'breather' to denote someone who breathes through their mouth, so the basic compositional sense is clear. However, the derogatory meaning ('unintelligent' or socially awkward) is a metaphorical/pejorative extension that is not reliably predictable from the parts and likely requires pragmatic or cultural exposure, so it is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
The insult mouth breather comes from the image of someone who breathes through their mouth rather than their nose, often looking dull or asleep. One popular idea is that this look made people think the person was 'unintelligent' or 'socially awkward', so the phrase came to mean that kind of rude label.