A dunce is someone people call slow at learning, or foolish. It is an unkind school-word, a little old-fashioned now, more at home in stories than in a kind classroom. In old pictures a child labelled a dunce sits in the corner in a tall pointed cap, the dunce cap — a public shame, not a joke if you were that child. Though actually, the history is stranger than 'stupid person'. The word comes from John Duns Scotus, a Scottish thinker around 1300, famous in his day for being sharp, not slow. Two hundred years later, people who still followed his way of thinking said no to the new learning of the Renaissance. Others mocked them as Duns men, then dunces: at first, people who would not take in new ideas. Only later did the word slide into a general name for anyone thought thick. So the first dunces were stubborn about old books, not children who could not read. Today, if you call a living person a dunce to their face, it lands as a sting, even when you mean it lightly.