Lowbrow
//ˈloʊbɹaʊ// adj, noun
adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Someone or something of low education or culture. countable
- 2 a person who is uninterested in intellectual pursuits wordnet
- 3 An underground populist visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960s, inspired by comics, punk music, graffiti, etc. uncountable
Adjective
- 1 Unsophisticated, not intended for an audience of intelligence, education or culture.
"The Three Stooges are known for their lowbrow slapstick humor consisting of foolish action for the masses."
Adjective
- 1 characteristic of a person who is not cultivated or does not have intellectual tastes wordnet
Example
More examples"He may have lowbrow tastes but at least he's not snooty and conceited."
Etymology
A bahuvrihi compound of low + brow. An Americanism whose first use appears c. 1902. Refers to the (by that time discredited) pseudoscience of phrenology, which suggested that a person of low intelligence and sophistication would possess a lower brow-line than someone of greater intelligence and sophistication.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.