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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
dunce
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
dunce's cap
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And this, for golfing dunces, is one of the joys.
▪ But because they looked like such retarded dunces, and women saw right through them.
▪ But women could be dunces too, in McCarthy's eyes.
▪ He was still the school dunce.
▪ It shows just what dunces the Tories are when it comes to education.
▪ My flaky judgments were modest by comparison-but numerous enough to keep me hopeful of regaining the dunce cap this year.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dunce

Dunce \Dunce\, n. [From Joannes Duns Scotus, a schoolman called the Subtle Doctor, who died in 1308. Originally in the phrase ``a Duns man''. See Note below.] One backward in book learning; a child or other person dull or weak in intellect; a dullard; a dolt.

I never knew this town without dunces of figure.
--Swift.

Note: The schoolmen were often called, after their great leader Duns Scotus, Dunsmen or Duncemen. In the revival of learning they were violently opposed to classical studies; hence, the name of Dunce was applied with scorn and contempt to an opposer of learning, or to one slow at learning, a dullard.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
dunce

"dullard," 1570s, from earlier Duns disciple "follower of John Duns Scotus" (c.1265-1308), Scottish scholar of philosophy and theology supposed to have been born at Duns in Berwickshire. By 16c., humanist reaction against medieval theology singled him out as the type of the hairsplitting scholastic. It became a general term of reproach applied to more conservative philosophical opponents by 1520s, later extended to any dull-witted student.

Wiktionary
dunce

n. One backward in book learning; a child or other person dull or weak in intellect; a dullard; a dolt.

WordNet
dunce

n. these words are used to express a low opinion of someone's intelligence [syn: dunderhead, numskull, blockhead, bonehead, lunkhead, hammerhead, knucklehead, loggerhead, muttonhead, shithead, fuckhead]

Wikipedia
Dunce

A dunce is a person considered incapable of learning. The word is derived from the name of the Scholastic theologian and philosopher John Duns Scotus, also referred to as Doctor Subtillis, or "Subtle Doctor", whose works on logic, theology and philosophy were accepted textbooks in the universities from the 14th century.

Duns or Dunsman was a name applied by early opponents to the followers of Duns Scotus, who were less disparagingly called the Scotists. When in the 16th century the Scotists obstinately opposed the new learning (i.e., the King James Bible), the term duns or dunce became, in the mouths of the Protestants, a term of abuse and a synonym for one incapable of scholarship. This was the etymology given by Richard Stinhurst. Samuel Johnson, on the other hand, maintained that the source of the word was unknown.

Dunces are often comedically shown wearing paper cone hats, known as dunce caps with the word "dunce" or "dumb", or simply a capitalized "D" on them. Schoolchildren were sometimes compelled to wear a dunce cap and to sit on a stool in the corner as a form of humiliating punishment for misbehaving or for failing to demonstrate that they had properly performed their studies.

Usage examples of "dunce".

Imbri agreed in a dreamlet, making a picture of the nix formed as a human being with the head of a fish, wearing a huge dunce cap, while an ice storm swirled about him.

For Dulness and for the dunces forward movement is inescapably circular, but the poem itself is linear.

In Book 1 Dulness and Cibber both contemplate the works of the dunces, who conclude the book by hailing Cibber as their king.

Cibber appropriately sleeps in the lap of Dulness, as she sits on her throne before the thronging dunces and acknowledges the contributions made to her power by education, collecting, science, politics, and religion.

The confusion of the duncical city derives from this essential blindness: the dunces know full well what they do but they do not know the significance of what they do.

Born, as we have said, in a boarding-house, left entirely in charge of the nurse-maid, educated at a fashionable day-school, brought into society before fifteen, living in the whirl, the bustle, the luxury, and the unhomeliness of a hotel, what could you expect of Miss Flora but that she should be, at seventeen years of age, a butterfly in her habits, a clever dunce as regards solid knowledge, and a premature woman of the world in her tastes and manners?

Pushkin, one of the best educated Europeans of his day, was called an ignoramus by Count Thingamabob and a dunce by General Donner-wetter.

Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign, that all the Dunces are in Conspiracy against him.

His name was Kong Deshi, and he was a minor diplomat on the official list, age forty-six, a man of modest di­mensions, and, the form card at the Foreign Ministry said, modest in­tellectual gifts—that was a polite way of saying he was considered a dunce.

His name was Kong Deshi, and he was a minor diplomat on the official list, age forty-six, a man of modest dimensions, and, the form card at the Foreign Ministry said, modest intellectual gifts -- that was a polite way of saying he was considered a dunce.

The bottoms raced by us in black bands and twists of oak fingers and pines shaped like dunce hats.

Cursing the man for an over-brave dunce, Vangerdahast touched the throat clasp of his weather-cloak.

Seeing him at his desk next to the bald and schoolmasterly Blackwood was, like seeing the classroom dunce placed next to the teacher so an eye could be kept on his work.

I didn't want to sound like a dunce or a withholder of crucial information, but I had to tell him, for my sake as well as his own, when I realized what her statements implied.

I didn’t want to sound like a dunce or a withholder of crucial information, but I had to tell him, for my sake as well as his own, when I realized what her statements implied.