[a. F. crétin (in Encycl. 1754), ad. Swiss patois crestin, creitin:—L. Christiānum CHRISTIAN, which in the mod. Romanic langs. (as sometimes dial. in Eng.) means ‘human creature’ as distinguished from the brutes; the sense being here that these beings are really human, though so deformed physically and mentally. (Cf. natural.) So, according to Hatzfeld and Darmesteter, the Cagots are called in Béarn crestiaas.] One of a class of dwarfed and specially deformed idiots found in certain valleys of the Alps and elsewhere.
1779. W. Coxe, in Ann. Reg., II. 92, note. The species of idiots I have mentioned … who are described by many authors as peculiar to the Vallais, are called Cretins.
1834. Medwin, Angler in Wales, I. 239. The Cretin is hardly a human being…. They have all immense heads and more immense goitres.
1879. Khory, Princ. Med. (ed. 2), I. 5. The offspring of persons with goítre are cretins without goítre.
Hence Cretinage.
1820. H. Matthews, Diary of Invalid, 314. Cretinage seems also to be peculiar to mountainous regions.
