OG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens. In this piece, writer Marlena Scott explores the history of of the word "moron," which is tied to the eugenics movement in the United States.

"Moron" is commonly used to describe someone who has made a decision that is perceived as unwise, or to scold oneself over a mistake or slipup. Whichever way the word is flung around, the origins of "moron" are far more sinister.

The term is attributed to psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard, who used it to describe “feeble-minded” individuals. It is closely tied to the United States’s involvement in eugenics, a scientific term, meaning "well-born," that describes the belief that the human population can be controlled by breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. It focuses on eliminating “undesirable” individuals, singling out unmarried mothers, people of color, the poor, and those with disabilities. In the United States, eugenics influenced much of the immigration and segregation policies in the 20th century. "Moron" and other words like it — such as "idiot" — were used to support racist, classist ideas and to advance white supremacy behind the mask of scientific advancement.

According to a report from NPR's Code Switch, "moron" was born of Goddard’s fascination with intelligence and his desire to measure what it was and what it was not. In the early 20th century, psychologists grouped people who fell behind the ideal measure of intelligence into three categories that we now recognize as casual insults: “imbecile,” “idiot,” and “feeble-minded.” Goddard, unsatisfied with the existing terms, coined "moron" to embody both low intelligence and behavioral deviance. None of these endured as medical terms, but at the time they were enough to institutionalize someone and sterilize them as a means to prevent them from reproducing.

Goddard organized patients by disease, habit, or condition, as laid out in his 1911 work, Heredity of Feeblemindedness. He analyzed and coded families with the following qualities: "A, alcoholic (habitual drunkard); B, blind; C, criminal; D, deaf; Dwf, dwarf; E, epileptic; F, feeble-minded, either black letter, or white letter on black ground (the former when sex is unknown); I, insane; M, migraine; N, normal; Sx, grave sexual offender; Sy, syphilitic; T, tuberculous; W, wanderer, tramp, or truant." Goddard wrote of one family: “The offspring of the feeble-minded woman and this feeble-minded man were three feeble-minded children and two others who died in infancy. An illegitimate child of this woman is feeble-minded and a criminal.”

"The idiot is not our greatest problem. He is indeed loathsome. ... Nevertheless, he lives his life and is done. He does not continue the race with a line of children like himself. ... It is the moron type that makes for us our great problem," Goddard said in 1912.

The volume of immigrants coming into the country during the early 20th century was the highest it had ever been. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1901 and 1910, 8,795,400 people immigrated to the United States, primarily from the area then known as Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany. It was essential to Goddard's work to ensure there were no "feeble-minded morons" in the bunch, so he sent assistants to Ellis Island in 1913 to observe and identify "morons" according to his methods. As previously mentioned, one of Goddard's methods included a pseudoscientific coded guide that looked something like a family tree. Goddard would study families, code their behavior by letter, and draw conclusions that the feeble-mindedness or blindness or deafness of the preceding generation would affect the children. According NPR's Code Switch, 40% of Italians, Hungarians, and Jewish people that were tested qualified as "morons" and were deported in 1913. Deportations doubled the following year.