Opinion: The words dumb and stupid do not mean the same as mean or cruel

Getting your phone wet is stupid, violently attacking a younger child is cruel. The two things are not the same, writes Ilona Hanne. Photo / Ilona Hanne

OPINION:

A few years ago, my teenager went without a mobile phone for a day while his dried off in a bag of rice. My sympathy for his phoneless state was limited given the phone had got wet because he had washed it after getting toothpaste on it.

In telling us about the damp phone, he started his mea culpa with "I did a dumb thing ..."

He was right. It was a dumb thing to have done, but it's also the sort of dumb thing that you can expect a teenager to do sometimes. My teenager wasn't the first to do something thoughtless or foolish, and he won't be the last.

Toothpaste on phones aside, the word dumb isn't one I like to use, when talking about my teenagers, or anyone else for that matter. It's a word my English professor once described as being a word that gives more indication to the level of intelligence of its user than the person it is being used to describe. The English language has plenty of better words you can use, she would argue, so don't use a word that is actually offensive when you consider its meaning. The word was one of many she banned us from using, and if we ever forgot and accidentally used it, we would find ourselves handed a photocopy of the relevant page of her thesaurus, highlighting the many, better and non-offensive words we could have used instead.

So I can quickly and confidently reel off the many words with a similar meaning to dumb. There's stupid, ignorant, brainless, daft or pea-brained for example, as well as dense, mindless or even vacuous. The words mean or cruel, however, don't mean the same and so don't show up in a thesaurus entry for the word dumb, nor do they show up as an alternative to the word stupid.

Which is why I am left scratching my head when I hear National MP Sam Uffindell describe the actions of his 16-year-old self who, along with three other boys, physically and violently attacked a then-13-year-old boy, as being "one of the dumbest, stupidest things I have ever done".

Because while we all know 16-year-olds can indeed do dumb and stupid things (see above toothpaste incident), neither the word dumb nor the word stupid goes anywhere near actually describing what happened that night in a King's College boarding house in 1999.

A physical attack on a younger student is not dumb or stupid. It is cruel, mean, violent and abusive, not to mention inexcusable. You can't excuse yourself from being a bully by saying you apologised (many years later) and you can't reinvent the past by using softer words to describe what happened.

The only context in which the words used by Mr Uffindell could be anywhere close to being accurate are in relation to his thinking around this incident right now. Because it is indeed dumb, stupid, not to mention ignorant and pea-brained, to think a violent attack by four teenagers on a younger child is something you can make go away with an apology or brush off as having been "one of the silliest, stupidest things" you have ever done.

So yes, teenagers can be dumb, or do stupid things. But those words describe things like toothpaste on phones not violent attacks on others, and to imply anything else does a disservice to your victim, not to mention the many other teens who have not and will not, ever do anything more foolish than put a phone under a tap to wash it.