dunce cap

noun

a tall, cone-shaped hat formerly worn by slow or lazy students as a punishment in school.

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Also, dunce's cap.

Also called fool's cap.

Origin:
1830–40

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To dunce cap

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Dunce cap is always a great word to know.

So is callithumpian. Does it mean:

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

dunce cap or dunce's cap

—n
	a conical paper hat, formerly placed on the head of a dull child at school

dunce's cap or dunce's cap

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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"New Hampshire has always been cheap, mean, rural, small-minded, and reactionary. It's one of the few states in the nation with neither a sales tax nor an income tax. Social services are totally inadequate there, it ranks at the bottom in state aid to education—the state is literally shaped like a dunce cap—and its medical assistance program is virtually nonexistent. Expecting aid for the poor there is like looking for an egg under a basilisk.... The state encourages skinflints, cheapskates, shutwallets, and pinched little joykillers who move there as a tax refuge to save money."

-Alexander Theroux