dunce: [16] Dunce originated as a contemptuous term for those who continued in the 16th century to adhere to the theological views of the Scottish scholar John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308). Renaissance philosophers ridiculed them as narrow-minded hair-splitters, and so before long the application of the word spread metaphorically to any ‘stuffy pedant’ in general, and hence, through the implication of a lack of true intellect, to ‘stupid person’. The conical dunce’s cap seems to have originated in the 19th century.
