knucklehead
knuckleheads
A knucklehead is someone who is a dunce or does something foolish. You might criticize your friend's baking skills by saying, "You used salt instead of sugar, you knucklehead!"
Knucklehead is an informal term that can come across as joking rather than insulting, depending how you use it. A pair of brothers might call each other knuckleheads in a fond way: "Hang on, I'm coming with you on your bike ride, you knucklehead!" The word is uniquely American, coined in the late nineteenth century, but made popular in the 1940s by an Army recruitment character known as "R. F. Knucklehead."
Definitions of knucklehead
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a foolish person; these words are used to express a low opinion of someone's intelligence
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synonyms:
blockhead, bonehead, dunce, dunderhead, hammerhead, loggerhead, lunkhead, muttonhead, numskull
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type of:
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dolt, dullard, pillock, poor fish, pudden-head, pudding head, stupe, stupid, stupid person
a person who is not very bright
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dolt, dullard, pillock, poor fish, pudden-head, pudding head, stupe, stupid, stupid person
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘knucklehead'.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
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