dunce

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noun \ ˈdən(t)s \

Definition of dunce

:a slow-witted or stupid person

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Examples of dunce in a Sentence

people with the learning disability dyslexia were once simply dismissed as dunces

Recent Examples of dunce from the Web

Reagan was famously called an amiable dunce, and that was unfair, but Reagan understood something [his predecessor] Carter did not.

— lorraine boissoneault, Smithsonian, "How White House Chiefs of Staff Help Govern," 9 May 2017
Delicate ceramic works—a dunce cap on a stool, a wall clock with no hands—evoke fragility.

— The New Yorker, "Cristine Brache," 31 Mar. 2017
There are plenty of dunce caps to hand out at Harvard, but not for its maligned money managers.

— spencer jakab, WSJ, "Spot the Investing Dummy at Harvard," 25 Jan. 2017
Unfortunately for their students, these demented dunces still don’t have their acts together.

— chuck barney, The Mercury News, "TV this week: ‘Homeland,’ ‘Scandal’ launch new seasons," 15 Jan. 2017
The next day, a New York tabloid put Manning’s face on its back page with a dunce cap perched atop his head.

— bill pennington, New York Times, "Eli Manning Relishes Clash With Enduring Rival: The Cowboys," 9 Dec. 2016
The Florida senator caricatured Mr. Trump as a dunce on policy who repeats five canned lines over and over, and said that Mr. Trump would have amounted to little without inheriting a fortune from his father.

— alexander burns, New York Times, "Republican Debate Takeaways: Descent Into a Free-for-All," 26 Feb. 2016
But step into their britches; to be smartphone-era dunces careening into the singularity must be excruciating.

— mary h. k. choi, WIRED, "Mary H. K. Choi on Why the Future Is So Horrifying," 1 Nov. 2011

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'dunce.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

The irony of dunce lies in the fact that this synonym of dullard is derived from the name of one of the most brilliant thinkers of the Middle Ages, John Duns Scotus. So ingenious were the theological and metaphysical speculations of this thinker that he was given the name “the Subtle Doctor.” However, in the 16th century, his followers became a conservative element in English universities, and they tended to resist the new learning of humanism. As result, dunsman and the shortened form duns (later respelled as we have it today), became terms of scorn, meaning first “sophist” or “pedant” and gradually taking on the modern sense “slow-witted person.”