knucklehead
Americannoun
-
knuckleheads
plural
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’m a knucklehead sometimes,” he said as he stumbled to explain his claim to being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2024
"I'm a knucklehead at times," Walz said when asked about it during the debate.
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2024
Ignore my 6-17 record in predicting Super Bowl winners, surely the worst of any knucklehead journalist who has consistently wasted entire workdays for more than two decades while writing 23 of these silly columns.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2023
“If Twitter becomes the go-to platform for the knucklehead brigade, advertisers will run, not walk.”
From New York Times ● Oct. 28, 2022
Y'know, my uncle just be looking out for Skunk's knucklehead self.
From "Patina" by Jason Reynolds
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
“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
“But it’s a good community. … We just have some knuckleheads that make it bad for others.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 3, 2022
“Yeah. Buellton and Brownley, really, but what kind of names are those for knuckleheads like them? Mom was going through some snobbish upper-class phase with husband number one.”
From "Among the Hidden" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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.
