Idiot ultrarunner or ultra-idiot runner?

Semantics matter even in an age where people, peoples (countries, companies), laws, relationships, fashion, abstractions, facts and more are attempted to be described by the number of "good", "bad", "sad" and "really" adjectives repeated prefacing them. For instance, that was a really, really, really sad introduction right there. So sad.

Illustrative of the importance of linguistic fascism, aka, grammar nationalist socialism, is whether the term should be "idiot ultrarunner" or "ultra-idiot runner", or if "idiot" is even the correct word at all. A recent NY Times article describes an in-depth etymological evolution of our favorite word, "idiot". Let's explore its suitability and applicability in describing the excerebrose, cognitive vacuum that we call "idiot ultrarunner".

Like many classy insults, the word idiot is derived from Latin roots. Idios, or "own's own", gave rise to commonly used words such as idiot, idiom, idiosyncratic, idiomorphic, and idiocracy. The implication of the root word is that an idiot is self-centric, acting and understanding the world unto him/herself.

From the article,

In ancient Greek society an idiotes was a layperson who lacked professional skills. The idiot contributed nothing to public life or the common good. ... In Greek society, the condition of idiocy was seen as peculiar and strange (a meaning that is retained in the English word “idiosyncratic”); thus “idiot” was a term of reproach and disdain.

One would have to ceaselessly ponder to derive any defense that ultrarunning contributes value to the public life for the common good. Ultrarunning is an activity that achieves no social good, participants don't expect to win, and does as much harm as good, if not more so, as compared to moderate exercise. 

Again, from the NY Times,

The education scholar Walter C. Parker sought to invoke this original meaning in his 2005 essay “Teaching Against Idiocy.” In it, he writes that “when a person’s behavior became idiotic — concerned myopically with private things and unmindful of common things — then the person was believed to be like a rudderless ship, without consequence save for the danger it posed to others.”

Parker's characterization may have been of an ultrarunner deep into a race. I suspect Mr. Parker may have paced a runner in his or her last 20 miles, where the activity's deleterious effects broadened to innocent family members and friends. If my personal clouded memory serves me well, at mile 95, I was exactly as Mr. Parker describes, although it's also an apt description of my behavior when I extemporaneously registered for said race. 

Being a private, self-centric person is not what most people posit a idiot is. To that we owe an American psychologist and eugenicist, Dr. Henry H. Goddard, who

was the first to translate the French Binet-Simon intelligence test, a precursor to I.Q. tests, into English, and used the metric to classify “mental age”: An adult with a mental age less than 3 years old was labeled an “idiot”; between 3 and 7, an “imbecile”; and between 7 and 10, a “moron.” 

Dr. Henry H. Goddard. src Wikipedia

The good doctor, who is perhaps our preeminent idiot savant, provides a utilitarian scale describing runners or ultra runners. Those that run 50k could be a moron, 50 miles to 100k, an imbecile, and 100 miles an idiot. Given that scale, an idiot ultrarunner or an idiot runner are hardly distinguishable save for the succinct clarity that "ultrarunner" describes a mentally challenged runner, with the prefacing "idiot" accurately denoting attempted or accomplished distances. 

Returning to our original question, ultra-idiot runner could imply one of two things: a runner who is severely mentally challenged, or someone who runs even more than 100 miles at a time, or both, as the former begets, and is a necessary condition for, the latter.

So while my dear mother-in-law may refer to me as an ultra-idiot runner, clearly by definition, I can only aspire to that level for now. I am surrounded and influenced by morons, imbeciles, idiots, and a handful of ultra-idiots, Pierre, Loic, Rocket, Jim, and Joe Decker to name a few. To be certain, when these ultra-idiots walk into a room I'm in, the average I.Q. drops a bit, but eventually, much in the manner that a massive(-ly stupid) object will warp space-time and affect the trajectories of those around it, my I.Q. has been steadily declining from their influence, and someday I will become an ultra-idiot.

With apologies to my wife, another apropos quote from the NY Times,

Eventually, the idiot destroys himself, but in so doing, potentially annihilates everyone along with him.