I hate the 'mouth breather' thing on tv

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well...mine went unnoticed until I was in my early 30's..

I had issues due to my (undiagnosed) aspergers in childhood. But a lot of it excacerbated by my also undiagnosed deviated septum. Tended to breath through my mouth, had trouble eating with my mouth closed (got s**t from mom and dad, and later from kids at summer camp for that), had trouble mastering swimming. Always had a sense that "god didn't stick my nose on right", because often one nostril would fill up with buggers when the other didn't. And much else. But it wasn't until well into adulthood that our family doctor told me that, not only, did I have a deviated septum, but that it was "the worst he had ever seen in his whole practice". And he referred me the specialist who did the operation.

So at the very least you ought to ask your family doctor about it the next time that you have a check up. Ask him to look up your snooze with his light thing. Might be relevant to your problem, or not. But its definitely a possibility IMHO.

Thanks for your reply, One thing I get from time to time is one nostril feeling like it's blocked.

I used to breathe through my mouth all the time when I was a kid, and eventually trained myself to close my mouth when I got to my teens and people would notice more. Unfortunately when I concentrate I still tend to open my mouth and worse stick my tongue out unconsciously. I guess I’ll never really stop.

I just heard the expression for the first time today. Or at least its the first time I noticed it.

A reporter who just wrote a political expose bestseller was being interviewed on TV news (replayed on U Tube) said something about "those mouth breathers who..." do such and such. Used it the way someone might us "pinhead", "knuckledragger", "Neanderthals"...etc.

Never noticed the expression before. And he is an American guy. So its not just a British thing.

^ now that’s got me wondering if it’s a modern phrase that’s spread from one English-speaking country to others, or a very old one that predates the era of colonialism...
Guess I’ll just have to check out some etymology websites later.

Edit:
Etymological Dictionary Online states the phrase’s first known usage in British English was 1883, but offers no source to back it up
Collins American English Dictionary states first usage in the 1960s, but didn’t become widespread until the 1980s... bit this was in an article on slang in stranger things that also didn’t state it’s sources