knucklehead
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of knucklehead
Explanation
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."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"I will own up to being a knucklehead at times, but the folks closest to me know that I keep my word."
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2024
"Civil rights can be violated and that person can still be a knucklehead, you know what I'm saying?"
From Salon ● Dec. 21, 2022
“If Twitter becomes the go-to platform for the knucklehead brigade, advertisers will run, not walk.”
From New York Times ● Oct. 28, 2022
Devin Allen admits that he occasionally behaved like a knucklehead, growing up in Baltimore.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 28, 2022
In close quarters he suffered their backwoods lubricity and knucklehead talk.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
He has five close childhood friends he affectionately calls knuckleheads, although a couple are doctors and one is an atomic physicist.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 23, 2026
A lot of passionate, maniacal and deeply invested knuckleheads, yes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 27, 2023
“It’s just the knuckleheads that can’t get on track. And they’re causing harm to everyone and making us look bad.”
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 6, 2023
When some within government are describing others within government to me as "knuckleheads", you can be confident there's lively debate internally about how to manage this.
From BBC ● May 16, 2022
“Of course not, calabazas. You’re such knuckleheads sometimes,” I said, looking around and talking to all of them at once.
From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
