Dumb

How to spell dumb

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dumb

What does dumb mean?

1. adjectiveLacking intelligence or good judgement; foolish (informal).

Dumb in a sentence

• That was a dumb mistake that cost us the whole afternoon.

• He felt dumb for forgetting his own password again.

Where does dumb come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a genuinely native English word, descending from the Old English 'dumb', which meant 'mute' or 'unable to speak'. It belongs to a wide Germanic family: Dutch has 'dom', German has 'dumm', and all trace back to a prehistoric Germanic root whose underlying sense was something like 'stupefied' or 'unable to make oneself understood'. For most of its history the word referred only to the inability to speak, and the modern colloquial sense of 'stupid' grew up far later, reinforced in American English during the 1800s by contact with German 'dumm', which already carried that meaning. The silent 'b' is the famous spelling trap: it was never pronounced and was tacked on under the influence of words like 'lamb', 'comb', and 'thumb', where a 'b' did once sound. That decorative, unspoken 'b' is precisely why fluent writers sometimes drop it.

How the word is built

• dumb (one Old English root; the spelling keeps a silent 'b' added by analogy)