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.”
Examples of dunce in a Sentence
The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 25 Feb. 2025
The peewee population interacted with each other in various settings and included bocce bowlers, bare-bottomed peasants, baguette bakers, blind men, the mustachioed mayor, female fishmongers, dunce hat-wearing schoolboys, snail saleswomen, and gobs more characters.
—Gqlshare, Orange County Register, 15 Jan. 2025
How could a society judge each individual on his or her own merits when rich dunces enjoyed the best educations and poor geniuses left school as children to work as chimney sweeps?
—John Micklethwait, Foreign Affairs, 29 May 2014
Go sit in the dunce corner and put the dunce cap on.
—Dana Rose Falcone, People.com, 25 Dec. 2024
See All Example Sentences for dunce
Cite this Entry
“Dunce.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dunce. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
dunce
nounan altered form of earlier duns, from the name John Duns Scotus 1266?–1308 a Scottish religious teacher whose writings came to be ridiculed in the 16th century
Share