说人笨，那个人肯定会不高兴，就好像英语中直接说别人 dumb，supid，那肯定要惹来一顿麻烦了。今天我们来学一个委婉的“笨”。

“Not the brightest bulb”按字面直译是“并非最亮的灯泡 ”，但它实际的意思可能很少有人猜到——就是“笨”。但它可不是“stupid”“dumb”之类的“笨”，而是相对比较委婉的说法，像中文里有时用的“他/她可算不上最聪明的”。

“Not the brightest bulb”其实只是个缩略短语，其完整形式常见的有“not the brightest bulb in the box / on the tree / in the chandelier”。“In the box”里的“box”指装灯泡的盒子；“on the tree”里的“tree”指圣诞树（上面有很多小饰物与彩灯）；“in the chandelier”里的“chandelier”指豪华吊灯。有了比较对象，真实意思就容易记住了。

日常运用中可直接拿“not the brightest bulb”来形容比较笨的人，如“Kevin is kind and good-natured, but he is really not the brightest bulb.”（凯文为人善良温厚，但他实在算不上聪明。）但更常见的语境是某人说了愚蠢的话或做了愚蠢的事后，见证人来一句“You are not the brightest bulb, are you?”。最经典的例子莫过于1995年的美国小姐Heather Whitestone在当年选美比赛问答环节的表现：

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?

Answer of Heather Whitestone: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever. But we can not live forever, which is why I would not live forever.

Audience in front of the TV: She's not the brightest bulb, is she?

还有一些好笑的例子和大家分享：

Brooke Shields: Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.（吸烟会害死人。如果你被害死了，你就失去了生命中很重要的一部分。）

Brooke Shields是美国著名演员，超级模特，也是网球超级巨星阿加西的前妻。

You: She's not the brightest bulb, is she?（她还真不算怎么聪明，是吧。）

Al Gore: It isn't pollution that is harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.（污染并没有损害环境，是空气和水里的杂质在破坏环境。）

Al Gore为美国前副总统。

You: He's not the brightest bulb, is he?（他还真不怎么聪明，是吧？）

除了“bulb”以外，“knife”，“pencil”和“crayon”也可表达相同的意思。它们的完整形式分别是“not the sharpest the knife in the cabinet / not the sharpest pencil in the box / not the brightest crayon in the box”。