as in idiot
a stupid person
she's here on scholarship, so she's clearly no dunce
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Recent Examples of dunce
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.
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Gqlshare, Orange County Register, 15 Jan. 2025
Go sit in the dunce corner and put the dunce cap on.
—Dana Rose Falcone, People.com, 25 Dec. 2024
In 1999, England was the dunce of Test cricket, sitting at the bottom of the class after Stephen Fleming’s tourists beat them 2-1 during that summer.
—Tim Ellis, Forbes, 26 Nov. 2024
The task its creator, Oliver Selfridge, has set for the machine is to recognize letters like R, A, and T. Unfortunately, Pandemonium is somewhat of a dunce.
—John Ganz, Harper's Magazine, 22 May 2024
See All Example Sentences for dunce
Recent Examples of Synonyms for dunce
Noun
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Overwhelmingly, though, the most common response was to seek confirmation of their suspicions that Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers were morons.—
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There are worse things than watching Black, Rudd, and Zahn play three gormless morons on a mid-life misadventure, but almost every scene and setpiece is constructed with a haphazardness that blunders away their charm.—
Noun
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So, the parallel thing that I’ve been frustrated by recently is not just calling Trump stupid, but calling Trump voters stupid.—
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Sometimes too stupid is actually smartski but sometimes is just stupid stupid.—
Cite this Entry
“Dunce.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dunce. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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