Not the brightest crayon in the box: euphemisms for the dim-witted

Couldn’t find his ass in a phone booth with both hands, the door closed, and the light on.

Wait, a phone…what?

Dan

If he went to a mind reader they’d charge him half price.

Seconded. :slight_smile:

The elevator only goes down.

The factory’s running, but they’re making something different now.

Every village has one.

Seventeen more of him and we’d have a golf course.

not the brightest bulb on the marquee
Doesn’t have the brains of a newt
When they were passing out brain he got stuck behind the door…

Dumb as a barrel of hair
Dumb as a post
Dumb as a wagon wheel

If brains were leather, he couldn’t saddle a flea.

So stupid if you put his brains in a bumblebee, it’d fly backwards.

In northern Ghana (amongst the Wala people, to be exact) a stupid person “has blank eyes” To make it more intense, you can say he has “blank eyes like the holes in a tree”

Indeed. Did I come over as ever so slightly…tetchy?

Anyway. Here’s a stylistic variant - one where you can substitute pretty much any English county you like; but to honor Mrs Trep*, we’ll go with the well known Buckinghamshire version:

Bucks born and Bucks bred
Strong in the arm and thick in the head.

j

  • who grew up surrounded by these people - you see?

Ah well, if we’re touring English counties, we can’t overlook Norfolk, where it is said doctors occasionally marked patients’ records with “NFN” (=Normal For Norfolk) - much of the county being deeply rural with isolated villages and a reputation (however undeserved) for inbreeding.

My stepdad would say, “So dumb he’d pay a dime to see a piss ant eat a bale of hay!”

My brother and I privately agreed that might be worth a dime…

Next stop Yorkshire then. In this context, Queer has the older meaning of peculiar, not quite right. To be said in a confidential tone to a single companion:

All the world’s queer except thee and me. And I’m not too sure about thee.

j

Full disclosure:

I knew this only as a pithy Yorkshire saying, but checking before posting, it turns out it’s a variant of a Robert Owen quote: All the world old is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer. So it seems that some Yorkshire folk are rather smart, and well read to boot.

I like this one from “Calvin and Hobbes”: a low-watt bulb.

“Obtuse enough to be a menace and not stupid enough to be innocuous”*

*description of the British ambassador to Nazi Germany, Sir Nevile Henderson, by British historian L.B. Namier.

Ooh! Too soon!

What? That was sixteen years ago?

Dumber than a coal bucket.

Doesn’t have the brains God gave a fly’s scrotum.

So dumb he thinks Manual Labor is the president of Mexico.

Around here we always added "and leakin’ " to “a quart low”. A quart low and leakin’

“not the shiniest coin in the fountain” which I think I heard on Third Rock from the Sun

Dave Barry talking about his dog (paraphrase):

Her lone thought, rattling around in her brain like a BB in a tuna fish can.

Doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

Doesn’t know shit from Shineola

As bright as a burned out light bulb.

Talks like a man with a paper ass running through a Forrest fire.

Won’t get out of school unless we burn it down.

Gets red & blue glasses with his report card*
*Because he always has 3 D’s

Any chance you could post the thai characters for this? I’d like to copy them.

For the op:

His dope’s just not that straight

sorry :frowning:

Thick and flavorless as a bean sandwich