Idiom
idiot box
Meaning
Television.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Stop staring at the idiot box and go outside.”
“My father spends every evening glued to the idiot box instead of talking to us.”
“The critic argued that society had become intellectually stagnant due to the constant influence of the idiot box.”
Examples
simple
“Stop staring at the idiot box and go outside.”
contextual
“My father spends every evening glued to the idiot box instead of talking to us.”
complex
“The critic argued that society had become intellectually stagnant due to the constant influence of the idiot box.”
Origin
From *idiot* + *box*, an allusion to the perceived lack of educational merit in television programming. The term appeared as a critique of the medium's supposed capacity to reduce the mental faculties of its viewers.
Key words
Related idioms
- Updated