blithering idiot

blithering idiot

A senseless babbler. This term owes its origin to the Scots dialect verb to blether, meaning to talk nonsense, with blither being a variant spelling. Combining it with “idiot” began in the late 1800s. It appeared in the British humor magazine Punch in 1889: “I’ll state pretty clearly that his son is a blithering idiot.”
See also: idiot
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • going to
  • cross over
  • face off
  • face-off
  • answer to
  • bag it
  • bag someone
  • bagged
  • bagging
  • break out
References in classic literature
"You damned blithering idiot," he said hoarsely, gripping the side of the table.
''So to actually meet these guys through Cloudbusting all these years later is pretty mind-blowing.'' He added: ''At first they look at you, amused, knowing the starstruck period will soon pass and that you'll soon realise they're normal people and that you'll stop acting like a blithering idiot.
A blithering idiot who helped usher in the Civil War by giving Kansas and Nebraska the right to vote on slavery.
A mistake many people make is to think Trump is a blithering idiot, unleashed on high office - admittedly, an easy mistake to make.
To many people who once thought this man to be almost larger-than-life - to be sophisticated and intelligent - this great man suddenly became a crude, blithering idiot incapable of making coherent decisions; he evolved into either Satan or Hitler incarnate.
But, if his memoirs are anything to go by, he's also a blithering idiot.
Were it not for Brexit giving financial markets the heebie-jeebies, this would have to have been one of the shortest bear markets in living memory -- unless, of course, you take note of doomsters like that blithering idiot of a so-called financial expert who writes, inter-alia no doubt, for the Motley Fool .
Wearing the perpetual bemused look of someone who'd just quietly broken wind and was just waiting for those around him to catch on, he starred as the uptight Tommy Beresford, a blithering idiot who'd been saved a stint of National Service in WWII after being run down by a catering lorry.
A bit uncomfortable, Ollie read aloud his essay on the causes of war, at one point saying emphatically, "And the President was a blithering idiot." Pam stopped him and said, "Is this an objective statement that you support with details?" "No," Ollie said, "but we all know he was a blithering idiot." Pam started laughing.
She came inside and I was a blithering idiot to be honest.
Jude Law is the usual blithering idiot as Dr Watson always is in all of Doyle's books with just some more action skills than before.
My passenger had little experience of tsetse flies, and while extolling the many virtues of this super insect, I sat back and watched as one lone fly in the vehicle turned her into a blithering idiot.
The short answer is 'yes, you blithering idiot, of course it's too late!' which is something of a blow because I've just remembered a great British event that was always popular at my school sports day: throwing the cricket ball.
"Unless you are a blithering idiot, that's the right thing to say.
Why must we stay together?" Ward has no particular concern for slavery ("Why had the first blithering idiot to bring a black man in irons to the New World not been hanged for his pains?"), dislikes the Irish and others in the underclasses, despises Southerners for their arrogance, and has the social power to manipulate Lewis Andros, the richest banker in New York (who lacks the right bloodlines).