Chrysti The Wordsmith: The Letter D - 4

Greetings I'm Christie the wordsmith. Recently on this series we've been examining a few of our many disparaging epithets headed up by the letter D. We've embraced the words do we buy Dalt digits and dip another reproachful D word is daunce an unkind epithet for a slow witted person. We've all seen images of the schoolroom daunce the unfortunate child in the corner wearing a conspicuous conical cap dunce is an APA noun or a word inspired by a person's name. The person here is a 14th century theologian John Dons Scotius a Latin name meaning John from the town of Dons Scotland a brilliant philosopher John Donne's Scotius lectured at Oxford Cambridge and Paris in the late 12 and early 13 hundreds producing many respected works on theology and logic. Generations of his adherents called the Dunns man read and taught his doctrines at Europe's most prestigious universities. But the

dung xmen despised and resisted change. The new thinkers of the Renaissance called the hidebound duns men old barking curs and accuse them of tedious philosophic hair splitting the dung xmen ultimately became dunces or dunces figures of ridicule anachronisms in a world of new ideas. An English document from sixteen forty two states that a dunce is void of learning but full of books. I'm Christie the wordsmith Christie the wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.