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Webster 1913 Edition


nincompoop

nin′com-poop

,
Noun.
[A corruption of
non compos
.]
A fool; a silly or stupid person.
[Law]
An old ninnyhammer, a dotard, a
nincompoop
, is the best language she can afford me.
Addison.

Webster 1828 Edition


Nincompoop

NIN'COMPOOP

,
Noun.
[said to be a corruption of L. non compos, not of sound mind.] A fool; a blockhead; a trifling dotard. [A low word.]

Definition 2024


nincompoop

nincompoop

English

Noun

nincompoop (plural nincompoops)

  1. A silly or foolish person.
    • 1680, Matthew Stevenson, The wits paraphras'd: or, Paraphrase upon paraphrase: In a burlesque on the several late translations of Ovids Epistles ..., page 161:
      Tis such another Nincompoop,
      I sleep, and he begins to droop.
      He sees, yet keeps his Eyes a winking,
      Says nought, but pays it off with thinking.
    • 1694, Thomas D'Urfey, “Part I, Act I, Scene I”, in The Comical History of Don Quixote: As it was Acted at the Queen's Theatre in Dorset-Garden ..., page 6:
      ...Heaven knows the time when? Art not thou asham’d to see me, thou Nincompoop?
    • 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel
      No wonder that Chauvelin's spies had failed to detect, in the apparently brainless nincompoop, the man whose reckless daring and resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest French spies...

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