The term “mouth breather”, though not at the same level of offense as, say, “c**ksucker”, is nevertheless used to paint someone as a cretinous slob.
As a child I almost always breathed through my mouth because my nasal passages were usually blocked, and in fact thought it was normal until it was called to my attention. It wasn’t until I had surgery as a young adult that I was able to breathe regularly through my nose.
I was taken aback when I first encountered “mouth breather” as an insult and have always resented its use in that fashion. So how did this become a pejorative?
I don’t know how it became a perjorative, but I noticed somewhere around junior high/high school that those people whose jaws sort of slacked open most of the time tended to not be very intelligent. People who could remember to close their mouths and breathe through their nose (allergies and other sinus issues aside) seemed to be a little smarter.
That was just my impression as a kid. It’s one thing if you suffer from allergies or something that prevents you from breathing normally. It’s another if you just can’t remember to close your mouth when you’re not using it.
There is a widespread perception, (the validity of which has been debated on these boards on occasion, but the perception is there), that people of lower intellect tend to not keep their mouths closed during daily activities. The issue is not that they actively breathe through the mouth as that, with the lower jaw hanging down, they appear to breathe through the mouth.
Regardless whether there is any substance to the belief about open mouths and intelligence, the perception that there is a connection gives rise to the insult associating an open mouth with lower intelligence. Your use ofthe word cretinous would peg it exactly: they are not considered mean or nasty or dangerous or even smelly or unkempt, but they are considered to have low intelligence.
{hijack} anyone else familiar with the term “jahoonk” (spelling?). A woman I know grew up thinking that this was a universally used put down along the same lines of mouth breather. She was shocked to find that nobody else grew up using the term. Anyone? {/hijack}
I think the term comes from an early conception of what ancient forms of humanity looked like. Until fairly recently, the general public impression of Neanderthals were that they were stupid, brutish creatures, the kind of cave men who knocked their women over the head with clubs and dragged them off into caves. The squashed-in faces and huge brow lines in the usual depictions made them look like apes. Big mouths, small nostrils.
Woody Allen had a stand-up routine from 40 years ago about being attacked by a bully, a “mouth-breather,” who was certainty supposed to be thought of as a lower form of humanity.
Most/all of the people with Down’s Syndrome I’ve met (maybe a half-dozen?) seemed to walk around with a part-way open mouth, often with their tongue showing a bit. I don’t know if they were actually breathing through it, and I’m neither an expert nor someone with a very large sample size. Perhaps someone who knows more about Downs can comment if mouth-breathing is a common trait…
According to this, Down Syndrome patients usually have enlarged tongues that tend to stick out, so it appears that having the mouth hang open is fairly typical them, although possibly not actual mouth breathing. In fact, their larger tongues might make mouthbreathing difficult.
Whether or not one breathes through the mouth, a slackly open jaw is usually considered a sign of disinterest, inability to understand, or even such temporary impairments as being intoxicated or hung over. As a pejorative, “mouthbreathing” has come to connote these conditions, whether or not it is actually warrented.
Of course one also may drop the jaw in the presence of something amazing or incredible, which seems like a completely different set of circumstances. Go figure.
I’ve known three people with Downs and all had very bad sinus problems. From what I was brought to understand this has to do with the misshapen facial and skull bones caused by the syndrome. Someone whose nose is “stuffed up” more often than not would tend to breath through their mouth by habit, even during those times when their nasal passages are oddly clear.
I had bad sinus problems for most of my life. A deviated nasal septum prevented sinus drainage, so my nose was always a little bit stuffed, and every tiny cold went straight to my nose and stayed there, often developing into a sinus infection. So as a child, I breathed mostly through my mouth, since my nose was as good as permanently plugged.
I had surgery last year, at age 22, to correct the problem, and now my nose is much clearer. But because I spent so many years not breathing through the nose, I find that I have to consciously remind myself that I can now.
I’ve only heard mouth-breather as a pejorative term in the last couple of years, and it usually means “retarded”, or stupid, like someone with a permanent “duh” expression. I also find it insulting, considering my nasal history, but, then, I suppose that’s the point of an insult.
