The online slang dictionary defines dumb as a rock as someone who is very unintelligent, but why rocks?
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Can you think of anything dumber or less interesting?– JimCommented Jan 1, 2015 at 2:54
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Right. And not only that, but rocks is a dumb choice, driving home the point.– John LawlerCommented Jan 1, 2015 at 4:01
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1Note that dumb as a rock is not slang.– tchrist ♦Commented Jan 1, 2015 at 4:36
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3Perhaps the idiom came to life when dumb meant "unable to speak" rather than today's definition, "stupid". Rocks aren't known for their loquacity.– Jared BeckCommented Jan 1, 2015 at 5:31
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This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about language.– Roaring FishCommented Jan 1, 2015 at 6:15
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2 Answers
As Dickens observed, the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and although it may not make much sense if you peer too deeply at it, you shouldn’t disturb it:
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.
Dumb as a rock is just like dead as a door-nail: a time-tested simile handed down to us by our ancestors.
Just as a door-nail can never be alive, a rock can never be clever, so the simile works — and persists.
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1Dead as a door-nail, deaf as a door-post, but dim as a Toc-H lamp. Dickens didn't coin the last because the Toc H only began in the First World War (I think).– WS2Commented Jan 1, 2015 at 5:46
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@WS2 Is "dim as a Toc-H lamp" a humorous made-up example, or is it a real Britishism?– augurarCommented Jan 1, 2015 at 10:08
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@augurar I don't know if you are aware of the TocH and what it does. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toc_H. It filled an important role in the two world wars. But the expression as dim as a TocH lamp caught on among service people to describe anyone not blessed with sharpness of wit, or intelligence. It has mostly gone out of fashion and only lingers among people of my generation who remember their parents using it.– WS2Commented Jan 1, 2015 at 15:00
Dumb as a box of rocks:
a hint from The Phrase Finder:
- There's "dumb as a box of rocks" and "dumb as a bag of hammers," too. I suppose the common thread is the heavy unchangingness of these humble objects, in contrast to the nimbleness of a lively mind, which would call up lighter, quicker objects as metaphors. "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" as Shakespeare would have it.
(Julius Ceaser: Scene I. Rome. A street)