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DUNCE
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Dictionary entry overview: What does dunce mean?
• DUNCE (noun)
The noun DUNCE has 1 sense:
1. a stupid person; these words are used to express a low opinion of someone's intelligence
Familiarity information: DUNCE used as a noun is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
A stupid person; these words are used to express a low opinion of someone's intelligence
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Synonyms:
blockhead; bonehead; dumbass; dunce; dunderhead; fuckhead; hammerhead; knucklehead; loggerhead; lunkhead; muttonhead; numskull; shithead
Hypernyms ("dunce" is a kind of...):
dolt; dullard; pillock; poor fish; pudden-head; pudding head; stupe; stupid; stupid person (a person who is not very bright)
Derivation:
Context examples
In a school carried on by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, there is not likely to be much learnt.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them, whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves?
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
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