knucklehead
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
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.
"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
“I understand international, dangerous people, and with all due respect to Mr. Rundo, he was a knucklehead who was misguided,” Carney said on Tuesday.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 30, 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
Remember what happened to the last knucklehead she married.
From "Flush" by Carl Hiaasen
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.
