Word.ws English Dictionary

dunderhead

UK/ˈdʌn.də.hɛd//ˈdʌn.dɚ.hɛd/

dunderhead noun: a stupid person; a dunce.

Noun

dunderhead (plural dunderheads)

  1. (dated) A stupid person; a dunce.
    • You're the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses!1883, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “A Cub-pilot's Experience”, in Life on the Mississippi, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, →OCLC
    • Poor old fellow's a dunderhead. That's where it is in a nutshell. Never could make a living. […] Nice old chap as ever lived. Only impractical, dreamy. Gentle as a sheep—and no more capable of running that big, expensive plant than a motherly old ewe.1915, Basil King, chapter 3, in The Side Of The Angels

Forms of dunderhead

pluraldunderheads
alternative England Southwesterndinderhead

Origin of dunderhead

From dunder + head.

Words formed from dunderhead

Questions about dunderhead

What does dunderhead mean?
Dunderhead means a stupid person; a dunce.
What part of speech is dunderhead?
Dunderhead is a noun.
How do you pronounce dunderhead?
Dunderhead is pronounced /ˈdʌn.də.hɛd/ (UK).
What is the plural of dunderhead?
The plural of dunderhead is dunderheads.

Words near dunderhead in the dictionary

  1. dunder
  2. dunder-headed
  3. dunderfuck
  4. dunderfucks
  5. dunderfunk
  6. dunderhead
  7. dunderheaded
  8. dunderheadedness
  9. dunderheadism
  10. dunderheads
  11. Dunderland

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dunderhead (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-dunderhead.oga.

Cite this entry: “dunderhead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dunderhead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.