I received an email today from a woman asking about the word 'dunsicall'; she writes: "I found it in C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. The portion of the sentance is "...utterly to be renounced and abominated as a galli-maufrey of papistry, gentilism, lewdness and dunsicall folly.""

it appears to be an early variant of the now rare 'duncical' - of or pertaining to a dunce; dull-witted, stupid, blockheaded.

all well and good, but this led me to the etymology of the word dunce (duns):

An application of the name of John Duns Scotus, the celebrated scholastic theologian, called ‘Doctor Subtilis’ the Subtle Doctor, who died in 1308. His works on theology, philosophy, and logic, were textbooks in the Universities, in which (as at Oxford) his followers, called Scotists, were a predominating Scholastic sect, until the 16th c., when the system was attacked with ridicule, first by the humanists, and then by the reformers, as a farrago of needless entities, and useless distinctions. The Dunsmen or Dunses, on their side, railed against the ‘new learning’, and the name Duns or Dunce, already synonymous with ‘cavilling sophist’ or ‘hair-splitter’, soon passed into the sense of ‘dull obstinate person impervious to the new learning’, and of ‘blockhead incapable of learning or scholarship’.[E.A.]

so it's a short step from 'hair-splitter' to 'blockhead'..

Howya tsuwm

Fer once in me life I knew somethin - that about the dunce I mean. I think he was Scottish but somewhere along the line I'm convinced he's actually Irish. Can't know why really - it's a sorta block I suppose. But that doesn't make me a block-head, does it?

be seein ya

GT

I was looking for some samples of scolasticim, and by accident found this, which I enjoyed.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/angelpin.htm
An amusing account of how a student subtly sassed the prof.

I found that John Duns Scotus was from Duns, Berwickshire. He was very highly
regarded as a scholar, and is currently called "Venerable" by the Catholic Church
which may be preliminary to his being sanctified for his defense of the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception.
Only much later when the humanists ridiculed his followers did "dunce" come
to mean stupid.

Howya wwh

Born in Scotland in 1266. Died in 1308. That's accorden ta me tesasaurus.

GT

it's a short step from 'hair-splitter' to 'blockhead'..
Now why am I blushing? :-)

Would it be correct to say that dunce is an eponym?

Alexander Pope, ribbing some of the literary dunces of his era:

Pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep.

Alexander Pope

Ah, that takes me back

Thanks for the reminder of how very good Pope can be, slithy.

Love the Pope quote!

From where does the dunce's cap come from, by the way?

WW

Dickens gets credit for written usage:
dunce's cap, a cap of conical shape, sometimes marked with a capital D, and placed on the head of a dunce at school. 1840 Dickens Old C. Shop xxiv, And on a small shelf, the dunce's cap.

but the foolscap, from which comes the shape, is much earlier.

Well, I'm confused. If the citation shows Dickens' use (1840), that doesn't necessarily mean that Dickens was the first to use the term (i.e., dunce's cap), does it?

Book regards,
DubDunce

alls it means is that it's the first written usage that Dr. Murray and co. found.