Citations:room-temperature IQ

English citations of room-temperature IQ

Noun: "(idiomatic, slang, pejorative) a below-average IQ; by extension, a dull or unintelligent mind"

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• 1990, Jim Bashline, "An Honorable Profession", Field & Stream, June 1990:

  It's the proverbial two-way street; treat a guide like he has more than a room-temperature IQ, and he'll do likewise.

• 1995, William Flanagan, Like Mother, Like Son, St. Martin's Press (2011), →ISBN, unnumbered page:

  In short, if you were a male high school grad with deep pockets but only a room-temperature IQ, you could probably get into Sarah Lawrence in 1978.

• 1995, "A tangled web unsnarled", InfoWorld, 19 June 1995:

  He rolled his eyes and looked at me as if I had a room-temperature IQ.

• 1996, Bruce Marvin, Criminal Intent, Glenbridge Publishing (1996), →ISBN, page 114:

  To think how I let this harmless, nut-crunching character with a room-temperature IQ terrify me!

• 1996, Edward Hibbert, "Star chow", The Advocate, 10 December 1996:

  There's more than a soupcon of camp percolating through the recipes in this collection, as any reader with more than a room-temperature IQ will be able to appreciate.

• 2000, J. J. Luna, How to Be Invisible: A Step-by-Step Guide to Protecting Your Assets, Your Identity, and Your Life, Thomas Dunne Books (2000), →ISBN, page 124:

  (Does this lawyer have a room-temperature IQ?)

• 2000, Maggie Price, On Dangerous Ground, Silhouette Books (2000), →ISBN, unnumbered page:

  “The guy's got a room-temperature IQ. He dropped out of grade school. To him, DNA is probably just three letters.”

• 2006, William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Little Good, The Penguin Press (2006), →ISBN, unnumbered page:

  The colonizers, displaying a room-temperature IQ about the locals, didn't know how to deal with the many non-chief societies in Africa.

• 2006, Jay MacLarty, Live Wire, Pocket Books (2006), →ISBN, page 5:

  That the President would assume it was “an excellent idea” only confirmed what Tucker now knew to be true: in addition to being an avaricious profiteer, the man had a room-temperature IQ—and the sooner he was gone, the safer the country would be.

• 2006, Frater Nyarlathotep & Jesse Lindsay, Ardeth: The Made Vampire, Lulu Enterprises, Inc. (2006), →ISBN, page 18:

  Anyone with more than a room-temperature IQ and a few years of life experience knows that civilization offers no social compact, no humane mutuality, no justice except for those at the top.

• 2009, Steven "Kelly" Grayson, En Route: A Paramedic's Stories of Life, Death, and Everything in Between, Kaplan Publishing (2009), →ISBN, page 80:

  Careful, Kelly. It's not his fault he has a room-temperature IQ. If you tell him how fucking stupid he is, he'll just go into a sulk and be of no use to you.

• 2011, Gregg Loomis, The Coptic Secret, Dorchester Publishing (2011), →ISBN, page 51:

  “Sara? I need you to call Home Depot, see if you can get someone on the phone with at least a room-temperature IQ . . .”

• 2012, David Fessenden, Gun Digest's Defensive Handgun Training Principles, Krause Publications (2012), →ISBN, unnumbered page:

  Anyone with a half a room-temperature IQ could have routinely figured out that breaking a couple of them, while on the range, would not put them in any great peril.