Forest Gump quotes "stupid is as stupid does".

[GoodTaste]

Forest Gump quotes "stupid is as stupid does". Does "stupid is as stupid does" mean "being stupid is as what stupid people do"? I don't understand the grammatical structure of the quote. It seems both stupid(s) are adjective, or noun. I am not sure.

Google has:

Forrest Gump replied “Stupid is as stupid does”, meaning that a person should be judged by his actions, not his appearance.

And the Free Dictionary:

stupid is as stupid does:
One's actions indicate one's level of stupidity (or intelligence). The phrase was popularized by the film Forrest Gump.

I failed to see the consistency of the meaning and the structure.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Forest Gump quotes "stupid is as stupid does". Does "stupid is as stupid does" mean "being stupid is as what stupid people do"? I don't understand the grammatical structure of the quote. It seems both stupid(s) are adjective, or noun. I am not sure.

Google has:



And the Free Dictionary:



I failed to see the consistency of the meaning and the structure.

They are consistent. The two definitions are saying the same thing: Judge whether people are stupid by what they do.

But both definitions leave out something important:

It's a joke. There's an old saying: Beauty is as beauty does. It means that you're only beautiful if you behave beautifully.

And we can say the same thing about stupidity. So Forest is simply riffing on that. You're only stupid if you behave stupidly.