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? – Jim Jan 01 '15 at 02:54
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Right. And not only that, but rocks is a dumb choice, driving home the point. – John Lawler Jan 01 '15 at 04:01
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1Note that dumb as a rock is not slang. – tchrist Jan 01 '15 at 04:36
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2Perhaps 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 Beck Jan 01 '15 at 05:31
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This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about language. – Roaring Fish Jan 01 '15 at 06:15
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It is an interesting question in its own right, but the answer to why rocks and not something else equally inert is socio-cultural rather than linguistic. – Roaring Fish Jan 01 '15 at 06:17
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I think it is just coloquial - "down under" we use the term "thick as 2 planks [of wood]" to mean the same thing. – davidgo Jan 01 '15 at 09:47
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Think about it -- what common object is more inert than a rock? – Hot Licks Jan 01 '15 at 20:29
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So if it is all about heaviness then explain the use of feather brain. – Lucas Oct 22 '18 at 13:13
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My favourite comes from Sheldon's [Big Bang Theory] mother, when she says that the rest of the family is a dumb as soup. No special reason why soup would be dumber than rocks, but it just sounds funnier to me. – David Garner Oct 22 '18 at 14:59
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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). – WS2 Jan 01 '15 at 05:46
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@WS2 Is "dim as a Toc-H lamp" a humorous made-up example, or is it a real Britishism? – augurar Jan 01 '15 at 10:08
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@augurar I don't know if you are aware of the TocH and what it does. http://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. – WS2 Jan 01 '15 at 15:00
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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)